Extreme weather events linked to the climate crisis, such as storms, floods, droughts and wildfires, have displaced 43.1 million children in 44 countries over a six-year period, according to a new United Nations report. The analysis by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), released Friday, finds that an average of 20,000 children were displaced every day between 2016 and 2021.
According to UNICEF, the report is the first global analysis of the number of children driven from their homes due to weather-related disasters, and looks at projections for the next 30 years. The UN agency analyzed data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) to determine historical child displacements linked to weather-related disasters and projected the estimated risk of child displacement in the future using a IDMC risk model.
“It is terrifying for any child when a ferocious wildfire, storm or flood barrels into their community,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell in a statement.
“For those who are forced to flee, the fear and impact can be especially devastating, with worry of whether they will return home, resume school, or be forced to move again. Moving may have saved their lives, but it’s also very disruptive.”
According to the analysis, China and the Philippines are among the countries that recorded the highest absolute numbers of child displacements, due to their exposure to extreme weather, large child populations and progress made on early warning and evacuation capacities.
However, relative to the size of the child population, children living in small island states, such as Dominica and Vanuatu, were most affected by storms, while children in Somalia and South Sudan were most affected by floods.
Floods and storms accounted for 40.9 million - or 95 percent - of recorded child displacements in the six-year period, due in part to better reporting and more preemptive evacuations.
The ten countries with the most child displacements triggered by floods, including coastal flooding and flash floods from 2016 to 2021 were Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Philippines, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan.
The ten countries with the most child displacements triggered by storms, including tropical storms, tornadoes, blizzards and sandstorms from 2016 to 2021 were Bangladesh, China, Cuba, Honduras, India, Madagascar, Mozambique, Philippines, the United States and Vietnam.
Meanwhile, droughts triggered more than 1.3 million internal displacements of children - with Somalia again among the most affected. The ten countries with the most child displacements triggered by droughts from 2017 to 2021 were Afghanistan, Angola, Brazil, Burundi, Ethiopia, India, Iraq, Madagascar, Somalia and South Sudan.
Wildfires triggered 810,000 child displacements, with more than a third occurring in 2020 alone. Canada, Israel and the United States recorded the most. The ten countries with the most child displacements triggered by wildfires from 2016 to 2021 were Australia, Canada, China, France, Greece, Israel, Spain, Syria, Turkey and the United States.
“As the impacts of climate change escalate, so too will climate-driven movement. We have the tools and knowledge to respond to this escalating challenge for children, but we are acting far too slowly. We need to strengthen efforts to prepare communities, protect children at risk of displacement, and support those already uprooted”, Russell said.
UNICEF said decisions to move can be forced and abrupt in the face of disaster, or as the result of pre-emptive evacuation, where lives may be saved but many children still face the dangers and challenges that come with being uprooted from their homes, often for extended periods.
Children are especially at risk of displacement in countries already grappling with overlapping humanitarian crises, such as conflict and poverty, where local capacities to cope with any additional displacements of children are strained.
While the climate crisis is bringing chaos to the lives of millions of children, not every child is equally vulnerable, the report found. A large part of whether a child survives a disaster, and how they experience displacement, depends on the early warning, evacuation, and support systems their community or town has in place.
Haiti, for example - already at high risk of disaster-related child displacement - is also plagued by violence and poverty, with limited investment in risk mitigation and preparedness. While in Mozambique, it is the poorest communities, including those in urban areas, that are disproportionately affected by extreme weather.
Both are among the countries – where the number of vulnerable children at risk of future displacement is the greatest and coping capacities and financing is limited – where risk mitigation, adaptation, preparedness efforts and financing are most urgent.
The analysis projects a terrifying future. Large scale displacements of children will likely become more frequent. With every additional one degree of warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates, the global risk of displacement by flooding could rise by 50 percent.
The report said riverine floods have the potential to displace almost 96 million children over the next 30 years, based on current climate data, while cyclonic winds and storm surges have the potential to displace 10.3 million and 7.2 million children respectively, over the same period. With more frequent and more severe weather events as consequence of changing climate, the actual numbers will almost certainly be higher.
But the UN agency noted that the projections do not include preemptive evacuations and because the definition of the natural hazards considered in the projections are different to those in the historic analysis, it is not possible to directly compare the two.
UNICEF is working with governments in countries most at risk to better prepare for and minimize the risk of displacement, develop and implement child-responsive disaster risk reduction climate change adaptation strategies, and design resilient and portable services to protect and reach children before, during and after disaster strikes, catering solutions to address context-specific vulnerabilities.
The UN agency urges governments, donors, development partners, and the private sector to take actions to protect children and young people at risk of future displacement, prepare them and their communities, and prioritize the vulnerable group of children and young people – including those already uprooted from their homes - in their actions and policies.
Further information
Full text: Children displaced in a changing climate: Preparing for a future already underway, UNICEF report, released October 6, 2023
https://www.unicef.org/media/145951/file/Climate%20displacement%20report%20(English).pdf