London, Europe Brief News – Children in the South Asian nations of Bangladesh, Afghanistan and India now face “extremely high” risks from climate change impacts, UNICEF revealed.
Globally, about a billion children in 33 countries face that level of threat, it added.
“For the first time, we have clear evidence of the impact of climate change on millions of kids in South Asia,” said George Laryea-Adjei, UNICEF’s regional director for South Asia, in the report.
Droughts, floods and river erosion across the region have left millions of children homeless, hungry, lacking healthcare and safe water and, in many cases, out of school, UNICEF officials said.
In Bangladesh, a fertile delta nation of close to 700 rivers, a difficult combination of more flood-driven erosion and little land for resettlement is driving many once-rural families into urban slums.
Children, who make up about 40 percent of the population of the country of more than 160 million, are paying a particularly high price in the move, researchers say.
Most Bangladeshi children not attending primary school live in urban slums, or in hard-to-reach or disaster-prone areas, according to UNICEF.
About 1.7 million children in the country are labourers, one in four of them 11 years old or younger, the agency’s research shows. Girls, who often work as domestic labourers, rarely even show up in the statistics, UNICEF noted.
In slums around Dhaka, children are evident, working in tanneries, shipyards, tailor shops, or automobile repair workshops. Others labour at vegetable markets or carry luggage in bus, train and boat terminals.
