Today at COP25, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, alongside UNICEF and several young climate activists, launched the Intergovernmental Declaration on Children, Youth, and Climate Action. This comes on the 30-year anniversary of the launching of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
This declaration has already been signed by nine countries; Chile, Costa Rica, Fiji, Luxembourg, Monaco, Nigeria, Peru, Spain, and Sweden. The Texas Impact team has encouraged the US negotiators to sign the declaration and we will follow up with them about this as the week continues. It is also important to note that while the US lead negotiator in 1989, Madeleine Albright, did sign the Convention on the Rights of the Child, this convention has never been ratified in the United States and we remain the only country who has not done so. This responsibility falls on the President to submit the convention to the Senate and since its signing, no President has done so.
But this event was more than just the launching of this declaration. Attendees were given the honor of hearing from Irish youth climate activist Theo Cullen-Mouze as well as an intergenerational panel between youth climate activists and governmental figures from five of the states that had already signed the declaration. The panel allowed both parties to ask questions of each other, allowing for conversation and an opportunity to state needs and frustrations on both sides.
It was clear from both sides that actions are being taken but they are nowhere near enough. The solution will not be easy, but it is a matter of reaching across the divide and working together. Adult and child, private and public sectors, business and faith communities must all come together to work towards climate justice. One of the youth activists also had a great point that the youth of today are internet natives; “we are born in an age of communication and this helps us overcome language, culture, distance, this helps bring us together.” There are so many things that both youth and adults can bring to the table and we need both to change the world for the better.
I would like to leave you with Theo’s words. Theo spoke truth to the current reality of climate change and the way climate action is being played out. In many ways it was an uncomfortable truth and one that both inspired and shamed me. Please hear these words and understand the urgency we must take to stop this climate emergency and be moved to action.
“I do not care about shiny pavilions. I do not care about brackets around words determined in negotiations. I came to Madrid because the adults are acting like children. You and people like you have sat around tables and talked and talked and talked. You have promised much and delivered little. Children are dying. If I had to sum up the climate crisis, it would be that: children are dying.”