Floods, storms, droughts and wildfires uprooted the lives of 43 million children between 2016 and 2021, according to a new UNICEF report.
That equals about 20,000 child displacements per day, with 95% of those caused by floods and storms, UNICEF said in its "Children Displaced in a Changing Climate" report on Friday.
"The link between climate change and displacement is complex. Yet it is clearer than ever that the climate is shifting patterns of displacement," it said.
Some children like eighth-grade elementary school student Khalid Abdul Azim in Sudan were forced to spend weeks living in the open. After heavy rains last year, he joined the ranks of 140,000 school-age children unable to attend school in Sudan.
“We moved our belongings to the highway where we lived for weeks. We could only access the village using a boat for more of our belongings," he said. "Many houses were damaged including ours."
The 43.1 million uprooted children accounted for a third of the 134.1 million people uprooted from their homes due to extreme weather between 2016 and 2021.
Over the next 30 years, extreme weather will displace 113 million children, the U.N. children's agency said, with nearly 96 million displacements from river flooding, 10.3 million from cyclonic winds, and 7.2 million from storm surges. The biggest culprit, river flooding, would uproot an average of 3.2 million children a year.
As a solution, the report recommended "ensuring that child-critical services – including education, health, social protection and child protection services – are shock-responsive, portable and inclusive, including for those already uprooted."
Seeking shelter in the city
Storms and floods hit children hardest among Asian nations, while droughts were the biggest factor in Africa and wildfires were worst in the U.S. and Canada.
"Given their large population, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, the Philippines and China are the five countries with the most predicted future displacements of children owing to all hazards combined," the report said.
"However, in relative terms," it said, "the British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas and Antigua and Barbuda are the countries that will see their child populations most affected by disaster displacement."
Khadijo Mohamed, a mother and farmer in Somalia, recalled how her family wound up in a makeshift tent on the outskirts of Mogadishu while her home region veers toward famine.
“We were farmers and used to live a comfortable life in our house because we planted maize, beans and other crops, and we used to have cows that we got milk from before the drought hit,” she said.
But for thousands of families across Somalia, the crops failed, livestock died and the community water supplies evaporated. That forced her to head to Mogadishu to feed her four youngest children last year.
“We hoped for rain the next year, but it also became drought. It became three consecutive droughts," she said. "When it became three consecutive droughts, we boarded a car and left. We entered the town."
