Climate Landscape Analysis for Children and UNICEF Rwanda Action Plan 2022-2024

Climate change, energy access and environmental degradation are equity issues, with children and young people often being the most vulnerable and affected. Addressing these issues is therefore vital for building a more sustainable future for children. In Rwanda, where children are highly vulnerable to climate hazards including droughts, floods and landslides, the importance of enhancing the readiness and resilience of the population is clear.  UNICEF, in its role as a critical government partner and as an organisation with vast reach and experience has strong potential to strengthen the response to these issues.

In line with this, OneWorld produced a Climate Landscape Analysis for Children (CLAC) and tailored UNICEF Action Plan, examining the baseline situation of climate, energy and environment-related issues affecting children and how they relate to UNICEF’s priorities.

The report looked at stakeholders, government policies and relevant programmes in Rwanda. It also provided recommendations on how UNICEF Rwanda could further incorporate and strengthen work on climate, energy and environment-related issues in its current country programme and made recommendations for the new Country Programme Document 2024-2029 around Climate Change, its impact on Children and the Rwanda Country Office’s response to it.

The completed reports outlined the pervasive vulnerabilities of Rwanda’s children to climate hazards, as well as critical policy and institutional strategic recommendations to help overcome and/or mitigate these vulnerabilities. UNICEF, as a central government partner with far-reaching regional and global influence is an important actor for the enhancement of Rwandan children’s resilience to climate impacts. In pursuit of this, there is a clear need for improved access to disaggregated data on the impacts of climate change on children, and improved cross-institutional collaboration for tackling issues related to the climate change-children nexus.

Overcoming access issues related to safe and reliable water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services is an urgent requirement, and one which needs to be explicit across all relevant governmental policy frameworks.

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