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	The urgent need for a child-centred Loss and Damage Fund by Cristina Coloon, Lucy Szaboova UNICEF, Save the Children, Plan, ICCCAD, LDYC   The world’s most marginalised children are already suffering the unavoidable impacts of climate change – death, displacement, malnutrition, the loss of education, and the destruction of traditional ways of life. These consequences are collectively known as climate-related loss and damage.   Since children have their whole lives ahead of them, such losses or damages suffered at an early age can lead to a lifetime of lost opportunity and can even affect future generations. That makes loss and damage related to climate change one of the greatest intergenerational injustices facing children today, threatening the rights enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child – such as the rights to survive and thrive, to protection, to clean water and food, to education and health, and to cultural heritage and indigenous knowledge.   Children have contributed the least to the climate crisis, yet they are suffering from its impacts more acutely than any previous generation.   The world has looked to climate finance to compensate those who have suffered the most due to climate change. Unfortunately, children’s unique needs and concerns have been largely overlooked in climate finance debates, a trend also reflected in climate finance allocations.   In 2022, nations agreed to set up a dedicated Loss and Damage Fund (L&D Fund), which is not only a significant milestone in climate negotiations, but also a chance to learn from past experiences of financing climate action. In fact, it is an opportunity to deliver climate justice for children on the frontline of the climate crisis.   Children’s first-hand accounts corroborate that climate-related loss and damage is part of their everyday realities. In a new report, Loss and Damage Finance for Children, 55 children, aged between 11 and 18, from diverse geographies share their experiences of loss and damage and recount memories of missing out on schooling, the loss or damage to their family home or livelihood, and even the loss of friends and family.   The children who shared with us their experiences unanimously demanded a seat at the table where discussions and decisions about loss and damage finance allocations take place. Their experiences and words make it clear that putting children’s rights at the heart of loss and damage finance is a matter of climate justice.   While the COP28 decision to launch the new L&D Fund recognizes youth as key stakeholders to participate in and shape the design, development and implementation of activities financed by the Fund, it only mentions children twice. To date, less than 2.4 per cent of climate finance has gone towards projects incorporating activities responsive to children’s needs.   At the same time, the way climate finance works now is pushing the countries most affected by the climate crisis into a debt crisis. When countries vulnerable to climate change are locked into a vicious cycle of indebtedness, with debt accumulating in tandem with accelerating losses and damages, compromises in public spending on essential services like education and healthcare often become inevitable. This has dire implications for children’s well-being and development.   It is important that the new L&D Fund, and loss and damage finance more broadly, break away from existing climate finance approaches.   The L&D Fund is a chance to ensure that present and future generations of children can thrive and fully exercise their rights. But this requires:   Recognizing children’s unique needs and vulnerabilities; facilitating their participation in decisions about the allocation and use of funding; ensuring the equitable distribution of loss and damage finance; and restoring children’s dignity when losses and damages are unavoidable.   Above all, it requires funding – sufficient, equitable, accessible and sustainable resources for meaningfully addressing the losses and damages suffered by children and their families.   It is crucial then that children’s rights are elevated, and their voices are amplified in discussions about implementing the L&D Fund as well as in setting the new global goal on climate finance. It is essential that this goal – called the New Common Quantified Goal – not only recognizes loss and damage as a critical pillar of climate finance, but that it is informed by the needs of climate-vulnerable children. We must not miss this opportunity to deliver climate justice for children.   * Cristina Coloon is Policy Specialist, UNICEF Innocenti; Lucy Szaboova is Climate Change and Environment Research Fellow, University of Exeter.   # Read the report Loss and Damage Finance for Children by UNICEF, Save the Children, Plan International, the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) and the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition (LDYC).   http://www.unicef.org/blog/urgent-need-child-centred-loss-and-damage-fund http://www.unicef.org/innocenti/reports/loss-and-damage-finance-children http://www.endchildhoodpoverty.org/publications-feed/climatechange   25 April 2024   Extreme heat has forced the closure of all schools in Bangladesh this week, impacting 33 million children, as temperatures soared to 42°C (108 F), 16 degrees more than the annual average, Save the Children said.   This is the second consecutive year that Bangladesh has been forced to close schools and comes just weeks after heat-induced school closures in both the Philippines and South Sudan. This shows how children’s rights are increasingly under threat from the intensifying impacts of the climate crisis, Save the Children said.   Bangladesh is one of the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis, with the Global Climate Risk Index classifying the low-lying country as the seventh most extreme disaster risk-prone country in the world in 2021. Tropical cyclones, floods and coastal erosion are common, and last year, Bangladesh experienced its worst-ever dengue outbreak which killed more than 1,000 people. Experts blamed the outbreak on the climate crisis and El Nino-driven weather patterns which created an extraordinarily wet monsoon season.   Like in many parts of the world, rising temperatures are also causing extreme heatwaves and drought in the country, with the government closing primary and secondary schools in June last year due to heat. A total of 33 million of Bangladesh’s 54 million children are enrolled in school.   More than 1 billion children, about half the world’s 2.4 billion children, live in countries highly susceptible to - and in many cases already experiencing – the effects of climate change. Children affected by poverty and inequality are even more vulnerable, with Save the Children research showing that one third of the world’s child population live with the dual impacts of poverty and high climate risk.   The high temperatures have prompted Bangladesh’s health ministry to issue guidelines to help people in the world’s eighth most populated country to cope and avoid heat stroke. They include drinking 2.5 – 3 litres of water a day and to rest in shaded areas.   Shumon Sengupta, Country Director Bangladesh, Save the Children International, said:   “Extreme heat jeopardises children’s physical and mental health – and it also has a significant impact on education. Even when classrooms are still open, children struggle to concentrate – US-based research suggests that each degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature throughout a school year reduces the amount learned by 1%.   “Children in Bangladesh are among the poorest in the world, and heat-related school closures should ring alarm bells for us all. Leaders need to act now to urgently reduce warming temperatures, as well as factoring children – particularly those affected by poverty, inequality and discrimination - into decision making and climate finance.”   Last year, 2023, was the planet’s hottest year since records began in 1850 and saw global temperatures rise 1.18°C (2.12°F) above the 20th-century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F).   http://www.savethechildren.net/news/bangladesh-extreme-heat-closes-all-schools-and-forces-33-million-children-out-classrooms http://www.savethechildren.net/news/report-one-three-children-globally-face-double-threat-high-climate-risk-and-crushing-poverty http://www.savethechildren.net/node/2034 http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/document/generation-hope-2-4-billion-reasons-to-end-the-global-climate-and-inequality-crisis/ http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/keywords/climate-change/ http://www.unicef.org/reports/coldest-year-rest-of-their-lives-children-heatwaves http://www.unicef.org/stories/heat-waves-impact-children http://ceh.unicef.org/spotlight-risk/extreme-heat http://www.unicef.org/topics/climate-change-and-impacts http://www.unicef.org/environment-and-climate-change Visit the related web page
	Human rights are inherent to everyone, everywhere by UN Office for Human Rights (OHCHR)   The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was a milestone in the history of human rights; it was the first time that the international community agreed on a set of common values and recognized that human rights are inherent to everyone, everywhere. That we are all born equal in dignity and rights.   The Declaration recognized that governance oriented toward promoting and protecting human rights is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.   Universal and indivisible, anchored in fundamental values that span every culture, religion and continent, human rights are tools to address the world’s biggest challenges, from the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, to skyrocketing inequalities, gender discrimination, conflict and insecurity, hate speech, disinformation, polarization and so much more.   We need to come together to confront humanity’s many pressing challenges. The potential for human rights to inspire and to help build a better, more equal, just and prosperous world for all remains unrealised.   The 75th anniversary is an opportunity to rejuvenate respect for our shared human rights, to advance the promise of freedom, equality and justice for all.   Volker Turk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights:   “Seventy-five years ago, in a world shaken by unprecedented horror, the modern human rights movement took its source from many currents, from many cultures and traditions in the never-ending story of the pursuit for justice, freedom, equality and human dignity.   The great wave of independence movements, which pushed back against foreign domination, colonisation and exploitation. Anti-racist and anti-apartheid struggles, and further back, the struggle to end slavery. The labour movement. Feminism. And most recently, the fight for our lives – for environmental and climate justice.   At a time of existential threat, States from Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe and the Middle East conceived, together, a manual for the prevention of destitution, warfare and harm.   Over the past 75 years we have developed many mechanisms for the promotion and protection of human rights. There is far greater awareness today of human rights values and state responsibilities to realise them.   We have seen the growth of movements that draw on human rights. Among them, movements for the rights of indigenous peoples; Black Lives Matter; #MeToo; and Fridays for Future – to name a few. Young people, in particular, consistently speak in the language of human rights when giving voice to their concerns.   If there was ever a moment to revitalise the hope of human rights for every person, it is now. Join us in rejuvenating the Universal Declaration, demonstrate how it can meet the needs of our time and advance its promise of freedom, equality and justice for all.   In many of my interactions with people, I am asked – given the pervasive conflicts and coups, climate change and other crises taking place in the world – have human rights failed?   No. Human rights have not failed. It is the cynical disregard for human rights, and the failure to respect and heed warnings on human rights that has got us here. The conflicts and crises stalking us today should be wake-up calls for the international community.   A wake-up call that when human rights are violated or sidelined, conflicts erupt. A wake-up call that failure to respect human rights results in instability, suffering, more inequalities and economic crises. A wake-up call that when human rights defenders and the UN Human Rights Office ring alarm bells, you must listen and you must act to prevent violations.   Human rights must be at the centre of governance – not just in of beautiful speeches by high-level officials. They must be in policies and in laws, and guide how these laws and policies are implemented. They must be the common thread, running through all aspects of governance, economy and society.   The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was crafted with lessons drawn from two global wars, the Holocaust, atomic destruction, profound economic devastation, and generations of colonial exploitation, oppression, injustice and bloodshed.   It was conceived as a roadmap to a more stable, more just world. Human rights are inherent to every human being. Leaders who ignore this truth imperil the very people they are meant to serve.   Despite conflicts that may divide us, it’s in the pursuit of peace, justice, and equality that we discover our common ground. Together, we can envision a future where every individual’s rights are safeguarded, conflicts are resolved through dialogue, and peace prevails.”   http://www.ohchr.org/en/human-rights-75 http://www.ohchr.org/en/human-rights-75/human-rights-75-countdown http://www.ohchr.org/en/human-rights-75/monthly-themes http://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2023/12/global-leaders-must-recommit-principles-human-rights-un-experts http://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/2024-02/hc-visionstatement-2024.pdf http://www.ohchr.org/en/events/events/2023/human-rights-75-high-level-event http://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/upr/documentation Visit the related web page
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