Recording 

Background

This session was organized by members of the Children’s Environmental Rights Initiative (CERI), a global coalition dedicated to advocating for children’s right to live in a clean, healthy and sustainable world.

Children, representing one-third of the global population, are uniquely and disproportionately affected by the devastating consequences of climate change, due to physiological and developmental factors. Furthermore, children are the most affected stakeholders in terms of longer-term climate impacts. Climate change impacts are particularly acute for girls and other groups of children experiencing intersecting and compounding forms of discrimination and inequality.

Children have distinct rights, as set down in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which recognizes that targeted action is required to address specific challenges, vulnerabilities and constraints faced by children, including age-specific vulnerabilities and obstacles in exercising and claiming their rights.

Parties have agreed that States should, when taking climate action, respect, promote and consider the rights of children, as well as intergenerational equity. However, this commitment has yet to translate into significant climate policy initiatives or investment. This is evidenced by the fact that less than half of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are child-sensitive,  and just 2.4 percent of major multilateral climate funds can be classified as supporting child-responsive programmes. While welcome progress has been made with respect to youth engagement, children’s participation faces distinct and significant structural challenges at all levels.

On 18 September, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child launched its  General Comment No.26 on children’s rights and the environment with a special focus on climate change, offering wide-ranging guidance to States on how children’s rights under the UNCRC can be upheld in the face of the triple planetary crisis.

The guidance, informed by an enormous wave of participation of almost 16, 331 contributions from children across 121 countries, addresses ACE elements in-depth. It states, inter alia, that children’s views must be considered in environmental decision-making and stresses the critical role of environmental education in preparing children to take action, advocate, and protect themselves from environmental harm.

A  child-friendly version of the GC26 is available, alongside ‘Our Planet, Our Rights, Our Voices’ - a  Global Charter on Children’s Rights, the Environment and Climate Change, bringing together the views, ideas and calls to action that children across the world shared throughout the consultations.

Objectives:

• To raise awareness of the specific and disproportionate risks and challenges that children face in the context of the climate crisis, and the role that youth can play in advocating for children’s rights
• To explore the new guidance to States provided by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment No 26 and its particular relevance for the ACE Glasgow Work Programme
• To contribute towards Activity C.2 of the ACE Work Programme

Agenda: