In the last decades, climate change has slowly emerged as yet another powerful driver of suffering for millions of children across the globe, recently prompting UNICEF (2021) to warn that the climate crisis is a child rights crisis. However, children do not form a unique or homogeneous group – nor are they equally vulnerable or impacted in the context of climate change. This brief addresses the distinct case of children without parental care who, at the heart of the ISS’s actions and advocacy for over 100 years, are of particular concern to this organisation. Drawing on three illustrative comparative case studies conducted through expert consultations, this brief assesses (i) how climate change exacerbates the risk of children losing parental care and (ii) the impacts of climate change on children without parental care.
This brief’s findings highlight three key linkages between climate change and children without parental care:
- Climate change increases the risk of children losing parental care through disaster-related mortality and displacement, and by undermining biological families’ resilience, prompting harmful coping mechanisms such as early marriage, child labour, or relinquishment and abandonment.
- Climate change increases the risk of children becoming unaccompanied, lacking any form of care, by driving unaccompanied migration; and by straining alternative care systems and reducing their capacity to accommodate additional children.
- Climate change has a distinct, often greater, impact on children without parental care, disrupting placements and hindering family reintegration efforts for children in alternative care; intensifying deprivation and heightening the risk of physical harm, abuse or trafficking for unaccompanied children.
Based on these findings, and leveraging the ISS’ long-standing expertise in child protection, this brief puts forward a set of recommendations designed to (i) prevent children from losing parental care in the context of climate change and (ii) address the specific protection needs of children without parental care in this context. These recommendations are directed at policy-makers in the fields of climate action and child protection, as well as social workers and other frontline practitioners working with these children locally.
