Weather disasters fueled by climate change — from floods to droughts, storms to wildfires — sparked 43.1 million child displacements from 2016 to 2021, the UN Children’s Fund warned Thursday, slamming the lack of attention paid to victims.
Children displaced by floods drink from a puddle outside a makeshift camp in Pakistan. The flooding displaced eight million people.
In a sweeping report on the issue, the United Nations agency detailed the heart-wrenching stories of some of the children affected, and co-author Laura Healy was quoted as saying by AFP that the data only revealed the “tip of the iceberg,” with many more likely affected.
“We moved our belongings to the highway, where we lived for weeks,” recounts Sudanese child Khalid Abdul Azim, whose flooded village was only accessible by boat.
In 2017, sisters Mia and Maia Bravo watched flames engulf their trailer in California from the back of the family minivan.
Statistics on internal displacements caused by climate disasters generally do not account for the age of the victims.
But UNICEF worked with the non-governmental Internal Displacement Monitoring Center to unpick the data and reveal the hidden toll on children.
From 2016 to 2021, four types of climate disasters (floods, storms, droughts and wildfires) — the frequency of which has increased due to global warming — led to 43.1 million child displacements in 44 countries, the report says.
Ninety-five percent of those displacements were caused by floods and storms.
The data reflect the number of displacements and not the number of children affected, as the same child could be uprooted more than once.
The figures do not allow for a distinction between those evacuated before a weather event, and those forced to leave in the wake of a disaster.
The UNICEF report offers some partial predictions, for specific events.
Floods linked to overflowing rivers could spark 96 million child displacements in the next 30 years, while cyclonic winds could force 10.3 million displacements, it says. Storms surges could lead to 7.2 million displacements.
None of those estimates include preventive evacuations.
