Youth face unprecedented wave of violence: UN envoy

GENEVA (AFP): Young people are facing an unprecedented wave of violence and sexual abuse caused by war, climate change, hunger and displacement, the UN special representative on violence against children has warned.

“Children are not responsible for war. They are not responsible for the climate crisis. And they are paying a huge price,” said Najat Maalla M’jid, the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on Violence against Children. “Violence against children has reached unprecedented levels, caused by multifaceted and interconnected crises,” she said.

M’jid, a pediatrician from Morocco, will present a damning report at a UN meeting on Thursday showing that brutal violence against children is widespread and that technology is facilitating crimes against young people like never before. “Ending violence is possible, and it makes economic sense,” M’jid told AFP, stressing that many people worldwide are committed to ending the scourge. “The problem is how we can support them, to bring all these (solutions) to scale.”

But the situation is dire, as her grim report shows. At the end of 2022, more than 450 million children lived in conflict areas, 40 percent of the 120 million displaced people at the end of April were children and 333 million children live in extreme poverty. This is compounded by the more than 1 billion children who are at high risk of being affected by climate change, which M’jid calls a risk multiplier.

Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death among 15 to 19 year olds, with 46,000 people between the ages of 10 and 19 committing suicide every year.

‘Parents of the future’

Child marriage is a widespread scourge, M’jid warns, with as many as 640 million victims of the practice. According to a separate UNICEF report, as many as 370 million women and girls have been victims of rape or other sexual violence during childhood.

“Children can become victims of child exploitation, online or offline. They can be victims of child labor, of slavery, of many things… including children in armed conflict,” M’jid said. She warned that as fighting and lawlessness become entrenched in several societies worldwide, such as Sudan and Haiti, “violence becomes normal.”

“If your children experience violence since early childhood and only see that… how do you deal with this?”

Violence against children has a ripple effect: it harms their mental health, harms their education and hinders their productivity later in life, the report says. “Even if you look at it from the perspective of costs, in some countries it amounts to 11 percent of national GDP,” M’jid warned.

The solution lies in a coordinated approach to public spending, involving business and civil society, and involving children themselves, she said. But tight budgets and the rise of conservative policies on sexual health and reproductive rights threaten to hamper efforts to combat violence against children, M’jid warned.

“The issue of the far-right wing and conservatism in many countries will also hinder some forms of action on sexual reproductive health (and) gender issues,” M’jid said. “We are facing a very difficult moment,” she added. “These children will be the parents of the future generation.”