for children, including risk of drowning, displacement and extensive health impacts resulting
from disease, deprivation of access to food and safe water, and trauma.
4.5
Right to Protection from Violence, Exploitation and Abuse
The stresses that climate change places on livelihoods and communities have been linked to
an increase in children’s exposure to exploitation, violence and abuse, including as a result
of child labour, early marriage, sexual violence and child trafficking, with heightened risks
likely to be experienced by girls and children displaced or migrating in the context of climaterelated disasters.120
Increasing pressure on livelihoods in rural areas as a result of climate change will increase
poverty in the Philippines, which in turn is expected to push more children into labour –
including its most hazardous forms – with direct impacts on children’s attendance at school,
safety and wellbeing.121 According to the 2011 National Survey on Children, 2.1 million
Filipino children were considered to be engaged in child labour in 2011, of which 98 per cent
were engaged in its most hazardous forms, and 60 per cent were engaged in the agricultural
sector.122 Following Typhoon Haiyan, a spike in the number of children migrating to cities in
order to search for work was also observed.123
In the context of climate-related disasters, a combination of widespread confusion, economic
vulnerability, and separation from family members can create the conditions for child
trafficking to thrive.124 Trafficking and other forms of gender-based violence were among the
most acute risks faced by women and girls in particular in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan,125
including those living in reportedly overcrowded evacuation centres.126 Areas heavily
impacted by the typhoon, and overlapping with high levels of child poverty, were already
known “hot-spots” for trafficking of women and girls, even prior to the disaster,127 illustrating
how climate-related stress not only creates, but further exacerbates the conditions in which
violations of children’s rights can occur.
4.6
Right to Protection from Conflict
There has been increasing scrutiny of the way in which the impacts of climate change act as
a ‘threat multiplier’ in relation to conflict, due to its role in compounding and exacerbating
other political, social and economic sources of tension,128 with catastrophic consequences
for a broad range of children’s rights.129
In the Southern Philippines, and particularly Mindanao, children have been severely afflicted
by long-standing armed conflict and clan feuds. These are responsible for displacing more
than 251,000 people in 2016 alone,130 and are associated with disrupted access to children’s
access to education and other basic services, along with experience of violence, loss of
family members, and a litany of grave violations.131
Children in these conflict-affected communities are also facing exposure to some of the most
severe climate-related changes in the Philippines; Mindanao is expected to experience some
of the most rapid increases in temperature over coming decades, including longer and hotter
heatwaves. This, combined with a projected decrease in annual average rainfall in the south,
will greatly exacerbate the risk of drought, particularly during El Nino years. 132 Furthermore,
many of Mindanao’s inhabitants, including the majority of the population of the Autonomous
Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), live in the immediate vicinity of the coast and are
therefore highly exposed to sea level rise and storm surges.133
Livelihoods that are highly dependent on fragile and climate-sensitive natural resources,
combined with the highest levels of poverty and lowest levels of human development in the