River flooding and torrential rains caused the forced displacement of 40.9 million children between 2016 and 2021 around the world, mainly in China and the Philippines, UNICEF revealed this Thursday.
If the trend continues – it is unlikely to be reversed – river flooding will displace another 96 million children in the next 30 years, UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) predicts in the report Displaced Children in a changing climate (‘Children displaced by climate change, in free translation into Portuguese’).
According to the document, floods are, by far, the extreme phenomenon linked to climate change that is causing the largest mass exodus of people, far ahead of extreme droughts, which forced the exodus of 1.3 million, mainly in Africa, or fires.
The UN agency also points out that, although China and the Philippines lead the number of children displaced by floods in absolute terms, the case is even more serious in terms of percentage of the population in island states, such as Dominica or Vanuatu or in states of the Horn of Africa, such as South Sudan and Somalia.
Paradoxically, these mass exoduses are a positive result of technological progress, said Unicef, since early warning systems make it possible to anticipate floods and organize evacuations.
But the United Nations Children’s Fund warns of the trauma it represents for children when they leave their homes and schools and do not know if they will return.
It is in the poorest countries – the report mentions Haiti or Mozambique – where risk mitigation and adaptation actions are more urgent, because there the reconstruction capacity is more limited for mainly financial reasons.
For this reason, UNICEF is working with several of the highest-risk countries to anticipate future floods and thus minimize the risk of displacement, with strategies that especially take children into account.
Source: TSF
