UN or regional body paper
Climate crisis as a form of structural violence against children and youth
Michael F. C. Bourdillon, Jenny Driscoll, William Myers, Claire O'Kane, Paul Rink ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child issued General Comment 26 in August 2023, which recognizes environmental degradation and climate crisis as structural violence against children. The document states that governments must ensure children have access to clean, healthy and sustainable environments, and must provide children with justice pathways to hold governments accountable. However, the CRC framework lacks binding enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance.
Key points
- Environmental degradation and climate crisis constitute structural violence against children under international law
- States have an obligation to provide clean, healthy and sustainable environments to respect, protect and fulfil children's rights
- Children should be provided with justice pathways and facilities to initiate legal proceedings against governments
- General Comment 26 provides detailed guidance to States on preventing structural violence related to climate change
- The CRC lacks binding enforcement mechanisms to compel State compliance
Limitations
This document describes a policy declaration and legal framework rather than evaluating outcomes or implementation. It does not provide data on how many children are affected by climate-related violence or assess the effectiveness of justice pathways where they have been established.
Abstract
In August 2023, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child released General Comment 26, Children and the environment with a special focus on climate change, which declared that environmental degradation, including the climate crisis, is a form of structural violence against children; that States are obliged to ensure a clean, healthy and sustainable environment in order to respect, protect and fulfil children’s rights; and that children should be provided with ‘justice pathways’, including facilities to initiate proceedings themselves to hold governments responsible for threatening their well-being. General Comment 26 provides detailed instruction to States on how to avoid structural violence against children in the context of climate change, but neither it nor the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) to which it relates contains any binding mechanism for enforcement.