World failing to provide children with a healthy life and a climate fit for their future

As climate and commercial threats intensify, WHO-UNICEF-Lancet Commission presses for radical rethink on child health.

No single country is adequately protecting children’s health, their environment and their futures, finds a landmark report released today by a Commission of over 40 child and adolescent health experts from around the world. The Commission was convened by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and The Lancet.

The report, A Future for the World’s Children?, finds that the health and future of every child and adolescent worldwide is under immediate threat from ecological degradation, climate change and exploitative marketing practices that push heavily processed fast food, sugary drinks, alcohol and tobacco at children.

“Despite improvements in child and adolescent health over the past 20 years, progress has stalled, and is set to reverse,” said former Prime Minister of New Zealand and Co-Chair of the Commission, Helen Clark. It has been estimated that around 250 million children under five years old in low- and middle-income countries are at risk of not reaching their developmental potential, based on proxy measures of stunting and poverty. But of even greater concern, every child worldwide now faces existential threats from climate change and commercial pressures. “Countries need to overhaul their approach to child and adolescent health, to ensure that we not only look after our children today but protect the world they will inherit in the future,” she added.

To protect children, the independent Commission authors call for a new global movement driven by and for children. Specific recommendations include:

1. Stop CO2 emissions with the utmost urgency, to ensure children have a future on this planet;

2. Place children and adolescents at the centre of our efforts to achieve sustainable development;

3. New policies and investment in all sectors to work towards child health and rights;

4. Incorporate children’s voices into policy decisions;

5. Tighten national regulation of harmful commercial marketing, supported by a new Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Further information:

Report: A future for the world’s children? A WHO-UNICEF-Lancet Commission.