Youth facing unprecedented wave of violence, warns UN envoy

Young people are facing an unprecedented wave of violence and sexual abuse driven by war, climate change, hunger, and displacement, the UN's special representative on violence against children has warned.

"Children are not responsible for war. They are not responsible for climate crisis. And they are paying a huge (price)," said Najat Maalla M'jid, the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children.

"Violence against children has reached unprecedented levels, caused by multifaceted and interconnected crises," she said.

M'jid, a pediatrician from Morocco, will on Thursday present a damning report to a UN meeting showing that brutal violence against children is rife, and that technology is facilitating crimes against young people as never before.

"Ending violence is possible, and it makes economic sense," M'jid told AFP, stressing that many people globally are committed to ending the scourge.

"The problem is how we can support them, to put all these (solutions) at scale."

But the situation is dire, her stark report shows.

Over 450 million children lived in conflict zones as of the end of 2022, 40 percent of the 120 million displaced people at the end of April were children, and 333 million children live in extreme poverty.

That is compounded by more than one billion children who are at high risk of being affected by climate change, which M'jid calls a risk multiplier.

Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death among 15-19 year olds, with 46,000 people between the ages of 10 and 19 taking their lives every year.

Child marriage is a widespread scourge, M'jid warns, with as many as 640 million victims of the practice.

As many as 370 million women and girls were subject to rape or other sexual violence during their childhood, according to a separate report by Unicef.

"Children could be victim of child exploitation, online or offline. They could be victims of child labour, of slavery, of many things...also of children in armed conflict," M'jid said.

She warned that with fighting and lawlessness becoming embedded in several societies globally, such as Sudan and Haiti, "violence becomes normal".