Climate change is a threat multiplier for violence against children

Jorge Cuartas; Amiya Bhatia; Daniel Carter; Lucie Cluver; Carolina Coll; Elizabeth Donger; Catherine E Draper; Frances Gardner; Bess Herbert; Orla Kelly; Jamie Lachman; Najat Maalla M'jid; Frederique Seidel

doi:10.1016/j.chiabu.2023.106430

Climate change is a threat multiplier for violence against children

Child Abuse Negl. 2023 Aug 28:106430. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2023.106430. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, USA; Centro de Estudios sobre Seguridad y Drogas (CESED), Universidad de los Andes, Colombia. Electronic address: jcuartas@g.harvard.edu.
² Department of Global Health and Development, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK.
³ Centre for Evidence-Based Intervention, Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, UK; Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, University of Cape Town, South Africa.
⁴ Human Development and Violence Research Centre, Postgraduate Program in Epidemiology, Federal University of Pelotas, Pelotas, RS, Brazil.
⁵ New York University School of Law, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, USA.
⁶ SAMRC Developmental Pathways for Health Research Unit, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
⁷ Centre for Evidence-Based Intervention, Department of Social Policy & Intervention, University of Oxford, UK.
⁸ Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children, USA.
⁹ UCD School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice, University College Dublin, Ireland.
¹⁰ Centre for Evidence-Based Intervention, Department of Social Policy & Intervention, University of Oxford, UK; Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town, South Africa.
¹¹ United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children, USA.
¹² World Council of Churches, Switzerland.

PMID: 37648573
DOI: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2023.106430

Abstract

Background: The climate crisis is the biggest threat to the health, development, and wellbeing of the current and future generations. While there is extensive evidence on the direct impacts of climate change on human livelihood, there is little evidence on how children and young people are affected, and even less discussion and evidence on how the climate crisis could affect violence against children.

Participants and setting: In this commentary, we review selected research to assess the links between the climate crisis and violence against children.

Methods: We employ a social-ecological perspective as an overarching framework to organize findings from the literature and call attention to increased violence against children as a specific, yet under-examined, direct and indirect consequence of the climate crisis.

Results: Using such a perspective, we examine how the climate crisis exacerbates the risk of violence against children at the continually intersecting and interacting levels of society, community, family, and the individual levels. We propose increased risk of armed conflict, forced displacement, poverty, income inequality, disruptions in critical health and social services, and mental health problems as key mechanisms linking the climate crisis and heightened risk of violence against children. Furthermore, we posit that the climate crisis serves as a threat multiplier, compounding existing vulnerabilities and inequities within populations and having harsher consequences in settings, communities, households, and for children already experiencing adversities.

Conclusions: We conclude with a call for urgent efforts from researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to further investigate the specific empirical links between the climate crisis and violence against children and to design, test, implement, fund, and scale evidence-based, rights-based, and child friendly prevention, support, and response strategies to address violence against children.

Keywords: Climate change; Climate crisis; Social-ecological perspective; Violence against children.