Cuartas Jorge, Bhatia Amiya, Carter Daniel, Cluver Lucie, Coll Carolina, Donger Elizabeth, Draper Catherine E, Gardner Frances, Herbert Bess, Kelly Orla, Lachman Jamie, M'jid Najat Maalla, Seidel Frederique
Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, USA; Centro de Estudios sobre Seguridad y Drogas (CESED), Universidad de los Andes, Colombia.
Department of Global Health and Development, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK.
Child Abuse Negl. 2025 Apr;162(Pt 2):106430. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2023.106430. Epub 2023 Aug 28.
The climate crisis is the biggest threat to the health, development, and wellbeing of the current and future generations. While there is extensive evidence on the direct impacts of climate change on human livelihood, there is little evidence on how children and young people are affected, and even less discussion and evidence on how the climate crisis could affect violence against children.
In this commentary, we review selected research to assess the links between the climate crisis and violence against children.
We employ a social-ecological perspective as an overarching framework to organize findings from the literature and call attention to increased violence against children as a specific, yet under-examined, direct and indirect consequence of the climate crisis.
Using such a perspective, we examine how the climate crisis exacerbates the risk of violence against children at the continually intersecting and interacting levels of society, community, family, and the individual levels. We propose increased risk of armed conflict, forced displacement, poverty, income inequality, disruptions in critical health and social services, and mental health problems as key mechanisms linking the climate crisis and heightened risk of violence against children. Furthermore, we posit that the climate crisis serves as a threat multiplier, compounding existing vulnerabilities and inequities within populations and having harsher consequences in settings, communities, households, and for children already experiencing adversities.
We conclude with a call for urgent efforts from researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to further investigate the specific empirical links between the climate crisis and violence against children and to design, test, implement, fund, and scale evidence-based, rights-based, and child friendly prevention, support, and response strategies to address violence against children.
气候危机是对当代及后代的健康、发展和福祉的最大威胁。虽然有大量证据表明气候变化对人类生计的直接影响，但关于儿童和年轻人如何受到影响的证据很少，而关于气候危机如何影响针对儿童的暴力行为的讨论和证据更少。
在本评论中，我们回顾了一些研究，以评估气候危机与针对儿童的暴力行为之间的联系。
我们采用社会生态视角作为总体框架，来组织文献中的研究结果，并提请注意针对儿童的暴力行为增加这一气候危机的具体但未得到充分研究的直接和间接后果。
从这一视角出发，我们考察了气候危机如何在社会、社区、家庭和个人等不断交叉和相互作用的层面上加剧针对儿童的暴力风险。我们提出，武装冲突风险增加、被迫流离失所、贫困、收入不平等、关键卫生和社会服务中断以及心理健康问题是将气候危机与针对儿童的暴力风险加剧联系起来的关键机制。此外，我们认为气候危机起到了威胁倍增器的作用，加剧了人群中现有的脆弱性和不平等，并且在某些环境、社区、家庭以及对已经面临困境的儿童产生更严重的后果。
我们呼吁研究人员、从业者和政策制定者立即做出努力，进一步调查气候危机与针对儿童的暴力行为之间的具体实证联系，并设计、测试、实施、资助和推广基于证据、基于权利且对儿童友好的预防、支持和应对策略，以解决针对儿童的暴力行为。
