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About a billion children are at “extremely high risk” due to the hazards of climate change, a rights group warned on Wednesday, adding that the living standards of youth have not improved over the past decade.
The KidsRights index also says that more than one-third of children worldwide, or about 820 million, are currently exposed to heatwaves, according to data provided by the United Nations agency.
Water scarcity affects 920 million children worldwide, while diseases such as malaria and dengue affect about 600 million children, or one in four, according to Dutch NGO KidsRights.
The KidsRights Index, the first and only annual ranking that measures how children’s rights are respected, has the best children’s rights in Iceland, Sweden and Finland, and the worst in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Chad out of 185 countries.
Of the top three countries, only Sweden has changed its ranking from last year, rising from fourth to second.
Marc Dullaert, founder and chairman of KidsRights, described this year’s report as “shocking for children of our generation and future generations”.
“The rapidly changing climate is threatening their future and their basic rights,” he said.
Dullaert added: “There has been no significant progress in children’s living standards over the past decade and, most importantly, their livelihoods have been severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.”
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KidsRights says the Covid-19 pandemic has had a severe impact on children, with disruptions and clinic closures leaving them without access to food or medicine, killing around 286,000 children under five.
The number of child workers rose to 160 million for the first time in 20 years, an increase of 8.4 million over the past four years, according to the Children’s Rights Index, compiled with Erasmus University Rotterdam.
KidsRights highlighted Angola and Bangladesh, which it said scored significantly higher on children’s rights.
Angola more than halved the under-five mortality rate, while Bangladesh nearly halved the number of underweight children under five.
But the report also slammed Montenegro for its low number of vaccinations, ranking 49th on the index.
The survey uses UN data to measure how countries are complying with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
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