Joint Submission on General Comment 26 of the Committee on the Rights of the Child on Children’s Rights and the Environment with a Special Focus on Climate Change

This submission has been prepared by the Advocacy Working Group (AWG). Several AWG members formed a sub-group to discuss the forthcoming General Comment 26 on children’s rights and the environment with a special focus on climate change, from the perspective of child protection in humanitarian contexts.

This sub-group convened series of online meetings and two workshops between November 2022 and January 2023 in order to draft this text. This submission identifies the areas of common agreement among the AWG members. The incorporation of these issues would reinforce the urgent need for children and their protection to be recognised as essential and life-saving within contexts of humanitarian crisis and the climate crisis.