Environmental Rights and the Impact of Climate Change within the Committee on the Rights of the Child Concluding Observation Reports

Abstract In recent years, there has been an increasing global focus on climate change and environmental issues. Although there are only two articles that refer to environmental health and none to climate change in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN Committee has considered these subjects to be children’s rights issues. Presented here is a summary of the findings from an empirical study demonstrating the increasing frequency of comments relevant to environmental issues and climate change within the Concluding Observation reports from the Committee on the Rights of the Child from 2000 to 2022 before the introduction of the new General Comment No. 26. It is further established that though relevant comments occur within all rights clusters, it is the health cluster and under the general measure of implementation where these are mainly focused, with access to clean water and sanitation being the primary issue.