The Climate Crisis is a Child Rights Crisis: OneWorld’s Climate Landscape Analysis for Children projects (UNICEF)

The climate crisis is a child rights crisis – jeopardising every child’s fundamental right to a clean, safe and healthy environment. Globally, UNICEF is adjusting its programme of work to address the challenges faced by children in relation to climate change, energy, environment and disaster risks.

OneWorld has partnered with several UNICEF Country Offices and relevant governments across Africa to analyse countries’ climate, environment, energy and disaster risk issues that affect children’s lives and prevent them reaching their full potential. Through assessments of each country’s policy and institutional context, we have explored the level of intersection between climate, environment, energy and child-related policies and strategies and developed actionable steps that can be taken by UNICEF, its implementation partners and government entities to build the resilience of children against climate impacts.  We have developed these ‘Climate Landscape Analyses for Children (CLACs)’, in Angola, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.

We work closely with stakeholders in each country, to validate and verify our findings. To achieve this, we facilitate focus group discussions with local communities, conduct workshops with children and youth, and engage in in-depth dialogues with government entities and funding partners. This work has allowed us to gain a deep understanding of the local context and collaborate with stakeholders to develop solutions that are relevant, practical and tailored to the needs of children in each country. Some UNICEF Country Offices also require a Climate Finance Strategy that identifies barriers to accessing climate finance for child-related initiatives; and identifies opportunities for partnering with key financiers and other development partners.

This work has underscored the close interlinkages between climate change and vulnerability – with children being amongst those most in need of protection.