Climate Change and Children’s Rights in Zimbabwe: The Case of Mashonaland Central Province
摘要
This chapter examines the implications of climate change on children’s rights in Mashonaland Central Province, Zimbabwe’s agricultural hub, addressing critical gaps in scholarly understanding of how climate variability systematically undermines the rights of vulnerable child populations. The chapter demonstrates that climate change in Zimbabwe manifests through rising temperatures, erratic rainfall patterns, and extreme weather events that create cascading violations of children’s rights to life, education, water, health, and protection from exploitation. While Zimbabwe has developed comprehensive climate and child protection policies, significant implementation gaps persist between policy frameworks and ground-level child protection. Children constitute all persons below 18 years according to Zimbabwe’s legal age of majority. Employing qualitative and quantitative methodologies in Tsakare resettlement within Mashonaland Central Province, this study reveals how climate-induced food insecurity, disease, displacement, and livelihood disruption disproportionately affect children, pushing them into child labour, early marriage, and sexual exploitation. The chapter concludes by providing evidence-based measures to address children’s rights violations, emphasising that robust climate mitigation and adaptation efforts must be integrated with child protection frameworks to ensure climate action prioritises and advances children’s rights rather than exacerbating existing vulnerabilities.