A malnourished child joins pupils at St. Andrew's Nutrition Center in Nayanaekabaran, Turkana County, Kenya, on Oct. 12, 2022. (Photo by John Okoyo/Xinhua)
More than 150 million children across East and Southern Africa are gripped by grinding poverty and climate disaster, an international charity report said Thursday.
NAIROBI, Oct. 28 (Xinhua) -- More than 150 million children across East and Southern Africa are gripped by grinding poverty and climate disaster, an international charity report said Thursday.
The charity, Save the Children, said in a report released in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi that 16.31 million children across Kenya, or 67 percent of the country's children, are living with the dual impacts of poverty and the climate emergency.
Save the Children Kenya and Madagascar Country Director Yvonne Arunga said the climate emergency and issues of inequality are deeply connected, and cannot be dealt with in isolation from each other.
Children are seen in Kidemu sub-location in Kilifi County, Kenya, March 23, 2022. (Xinhua/Dong Jianghui)
Arunga said crises like these push people even deeper into grinding poverty and leave millions of people even more vulnerable to the next flood or drought.
"In Kenya, this connection could not be any more obvious. The devastating drought we have seen in Kenya and the larger Horn of Africa is the worst in 40 years and has hit the poorest parts of the country hardest, leaving millions of people hungry and many displaced," she added.
South Sudan topped the list of countries in East and Southern Africa most likely to face this "double threat", with 87 percent of children in the country affected, followed by Mozambique (80 percent) and Madagascar (73 percent), according to the report titled -- Generation Hope: 2.4 billion reasons to end the global climate and inequality crisis.
Kenya ranks the 10th highest (67 percent) globally and third in the region in terms of the overall number of children facing this double threat, said the report.
The report found that while 21.24 million children in Kenya are estimated to be affected by at least one extreme climate event a year, some of them are at particular risk because they are living in poverty and so have fewer resources to protect themselves and recover.
Save the Children warned that if the climate and inequality crisis is not addressed with urgency, the frequency and severity of humanitarian and cost of living crises are set to soar. ■
