The cascading crises that the world has witnessed this year give child rights advocates such as myself pause for thought: what are the ways forward and how can we all ensure that all children have their rights fulfilled and the chance of a brighter future?
In my role as chief executive of Save the Children International, I get to meet children from so many complex, fragile environments facing situations that are unimaginable to most of us – situations no child should ever be in – and I am so often overwhelmed by their resilience and their hope. At a refugee transit centre on the border of Sudan and South Sudan this year, I met a 13-year-old boy who had fled the war in Sudan with his extended family. He spoke of the heartbreaking loss of both his parents in the war and how he struggled with ongoing nightmares. As we were speaking outside on a makeshift volleyball court, groups of teenage boys who had also fled the war in Sudan were laughing and cheering as they competed against each other to get the ball across the net, taking turns to play.
For no matter what, children are children. They want to play. They want to laugh. They want to learn. They want a future. And we need to be there to support them – and to listen to them.
It could be so easy to feel overwhelmed by these heartbreaking stories, but switching off is not the answer, although increasingly this is seen as the solution. Research by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism shows that news avoidance hit record levels in 2024 with 39 percent of people surveyed – compared with 29 percent in 2017 – saying they actively avoid the news some or all the time. They said the volume of information, long-running stories such as the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, and the negative nature of the news, make them feel anxious and powerless.
Funding for humanitarian crises has also fallen, with only about 43 percent of the United Nations’ humanitarian response plan fulfilled by the end of November, to assist about 198 million people. About $400m less has been raised compared with the same time last year when about 45 percent of the required amount was raised.
But now, more than ever, it is critical that we don’t turn our back on the world’s children. Children have done the least to cause the situations they find themselves in, yet they are impacted the most. Deadly conflicts around the world and a climate emergency for which children are paying the heaviest price are taking a heavy toll on their hopes and dreams.
This year we marked 100 years since the founder of Save the Children, Eglantyne Jebb, successfully argued that children were people in their own right, not just the possessions of adults, and deserved their own fundamental rights. This was defined in the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child and paved the way for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) that we adhere to today - the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history.
Today, every child has rights – including the right to health, to education, to protection, to security, to be themselves and to have their voices heard. But it has been increasingly disheartening to see children’s rights eroded due to the consistent threats of conflict, climate change and inequality.
Today’s children are facing unprecedented conflicts and geopolitical power struggles that ignore their mental, physical, and emotional safety and rights. Additionally, climate-related disasters are displacing record numbers of children from their homes.
Our recent report, Stop the War on Children, showed that 473 million children – or one in every five children globally – are living in or fleeing from a conflict zone. We are also seeing grave violations against children in times of war almost tripling since 2010. We know children confronted with such violence are dealing with sights no child should ever have to experience.
During this year’s UN General Assembly meeting we hosted a session with Member States on the situation for children in the occupied Palestinian territory. One of the children who spoke with us was Rand *(name changed), a 17-year-old girl living in the West Bank. After living through years of war she said to us: “I’m not sure if what I told you today will make any change, and frankly I don’t feel that it will make any change. But I really want change to happen. I want us to have a life like children in other parts of the world. As a Palestinian child, I really want our lives to change, and for the war to end, and for us to be able to live free and with our rights respected.”
New analysis by Save the Children ahead of the COP29 summit in Azerbaijan last month showed that one in eight of the world’s children has been directly impacted by the 10 biggest extreme weather events so far this year, while the number of children in crisis levels of hunger due to extreme weather events had doubled in five years. Children forced from their homes lose that sense of safety and security as well as losing the chance to learn and shape their future lives.
At this COP I met Naomi, a child campaigner we supported to come to the event from South Sudan, where earlier this year schools across the country were closed for two weeks due to a blistering heatwave. With rising temperatures making extreme weather events like this more frequent and severe, she said that without urgent action from leaders, there is no future for her and other children.
On top of this, the rates of violence against children are staggering, with half of the world’s 2.4 billion children experiencing physical, sexual, emotional abuse and neglect every year leading to far-reaching consequences that can persist into adulthood such as the risk of mental health conditions and social problems such as substance abuse.
It is no wonder that people are increasingly turning away from confronting the reality of the daily news, but at a time of rising challenges, we cannot keep turning away. We need to engage to tackle these challenges and ensure that children – who make up one-third of the world population – can have their rights met today and in the future. We need to listen to children, give them a platform to share their ideas and promote their rights. Together, we need to make 2025 a better year for children.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.