Climate crisis as a form of structural violence against children and youth

Introduction

In August 2023, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child released General Comment 26, Children and the environment with a special focus on climate change, which declared that environmental degradation, including the climate crisis, is a form of structural violence against children; that States are obliged to ensure a clean, healthy and sustainable environment in order to respect, protect and fulfil children’s rights; and that children should be provided with ‘justice pathways’, including facilities to initiate proceedings themselves to hold governments responsible for threatening their well-being. General Comment 26 provides detailed instruction to States on how to avoid structural violence against children in the context of climate change, but neither it nor the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) to which it relates contains any binding mechanism for enforcement.

The term ‘structural violence’, dating back in violence studies at least half a century, relates to dominant institutions that impose systemic harms on a vulnerable group of individuals. When children are the victims, structural violence has been understood as political, economic or other institutional activity that deprives children of the ability to meet needs essential to their survival and development. This broad definition aligns well with the WHO definition of child maltreatment: ‘All types of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect, negligence and commercial or other exploitation, which results in actual or potential harm to the child’s health, survival, development or dignity in the context of a relationship of responsibility, trust or power’.¹ Within this definition fall policies of governments that induce climate change—such as fossil fuel subsidies, oil and gas exploration permits, and obstruction of attempts to eliminate dependence on fossil fuels—which threaten children’s health and safety throughout the duration of their life expectancy and thereby constitute structural violence against children.

Governments universally recognise their responsibility to ensure the safety and well-being of children within their jurisdictions, which they typically address through policies and interventions relating to education and social welfare. Contemporary child protection programmes, laws and policies today remain largely focused on direct interpersonal violence and neglect and fail to address systemic structural violence against children in any meaningful way. A focus on governments in the context of climate change is justified, since all countries that have ratified the CRC have an obligation to ensure that the rights of children in their jurisdiction are fulfilled. Also, as members of global initiatives to limit climate change, governments are responsible for reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions and regulating the private sector to the same end. Besides, many governments own or subsidise companies with the highest levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate crisis as structural violence against children

Children are disproportionately affected by destabilisation of the earth’s climate,² which is expedited by private and public institutions globally. The myriad harmful effects on children are summarised in a 2021 UNICEF report, The Climate Crisis is a Child Rights Crisis. Direct and indirect harmful effects on children from climate change include health problems induced by heat and pollution; disruption of family livelihoods leading to inadequate nutrition and risks of exploitation; damage to homes by storms, floods and rising sea levels; forced migration; and disruption of basic services.

The UNICEF report introduces a Children’s Climate Risk Index, showing where children are most vulnerable and identifying those countries most responsible for causing the warming placing them at risk. It draws particular attention to Africa where ‘all countries and virtually all children are affected by substantially heightened risks’, and children are ‘subject to extraordinarily high levels of exposure and vulnerability’. The impact of climate change extends to various forms of social injustice and violence provoked or exacerbated by, for example, hunger and conflict arising from repeated droughts.

In addition to the increased harm that global warming causes to the developing bodies and security of children, both children and youth experience significant emotional and psychological trauma from the prospect of growing older in a climate-ravaged world. Indeed, the researchers behind a global 2021 study on youth climate anxiety were ‘disturbed by the scale of emotional and psychological effects of climate change upon the children of the world, and the number who reported feeling hopeless and frightened about the future of humanity’.³

Harmful impacts of climate change on children have long been known by governments

Governments contributing to structural violence related to the climate crisis cannot viably plead ignorance. In 1988, the Toronto Conference on Changing Atmosphere—attended by 300 international scientists, governmental policy makers and representatives of the United Nations and non-governmental organisations—warned that emissions from human activities were causing changes to the atmosphere that could lead to dire consequences if left uncontrolled. Scientists at the Conference emphasised that such atmospheric changes represented a major threat to international security and were already inducing harmful consequences over many parts of the globe. Based on this analysis, they advised that global emissions should be reduced to at least 20% below 1988 levels by 2005.⁴

Also in 1988, the UN Environmental Programme together with the World Meteorological Organisation established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to help governments better understand the scientific basis of climate change and its risks. The IPCC produces for its 195 member countries regular reports, including options for mitigating and adapting to climate change.

Climate change was prominently raised again internationally in the 1992 ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro, attended by 117 heads of state and by political leaders, scientists and environmental organisations from 178 countries. Since then, many international and national policy frameworks and procedures have been developed to increase government awareness, cooperation and accountability to prevent, mitigate, and address the climate crisis. The first global treaty addressing global warming—the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—came in 1992. It provided a framework for negotiations on climate related matters, including efforts to respect the principle of intergenerational equity. The Paris Agreement, adopted at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in 2015, is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. Established through the political compromise of 196 nations, it calls on signatory governments to submit updates and progress reports regarding their commitments to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts—their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

Unfortunately, the level of ambition in the Paris agreement and within individual country commitments remains ineffectively low. The pledged changes accumulated in all NDCs in 2022 amounted to a mere 0.3% decrease from 2019 levels and only a third were adjudged ‘child sensitive’.⁵ Scientific recognition of the particular vulnerabilities of children to climate related harms has increased dramatically in the last decade and prominent international organisations such as the IPCC, the WHO, UNICEF and the Lancet medical journal have brought these disproportionate impacts to the attention of world governments in numerous reports.

Under international law, national governments are responsible for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and stemming global warming. It is their duty to regulate their respective jurisdictions’ behaviour that contributes to the climate crisis and thereby causes structural violence against children, amounting to a serious form of child maltreatment.