ZIMBABWEAN children are among the world’s most vulnerable to impacts of climate change due to the country’s high exposure to drought and limited access to essential social services, a new Unicef report has revealed.
According to child rights organisations, weak disaster preparedness systems in Zimbabwe and across the region worsened the crisis, particularly in rural communities where early warning systems often fail to reach vulnerable populations in time.
Around 3,5 million children were impacted by an El Niño-induced drought in Zimbabwe, one of the worst in 40 years.
According to Unicef’s latest Children’s Climate Risk Report 2026, millions of children globally face multiple climate threats without the necessary services to cope, with more than 1 billion children exposed to at least three climate hazards.
The report said children in Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Malawi and Niger faced heightened risks of food insecurity, water shortages and diseases as climate-related hazards became frequent and severe because of human-induced global warming.
“These landlocked countries are among those which not only have high drought exposure but also low levels of access to social services, rendering children in these countries especially vulnerable to drought-related shocks and food insecurity.
“Children living in these geographies are likely to face increased water insecurity, making infants and young children more prone to dehydration and diarrhoeal diseases, which are leading causes of child mortality in developing countries,” the report read.
Unicef also noted that almost every child worldwide is exposed to at least one climate-related hazard.
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“New, more granular data in this report reveals the staggering number of children already exposed to climate-related hazards globally.
“The scale of this exposure underscores the urgency of the crisis as almost all children are now exposed to hazards such as floods, droughts, tropical storms, heatwaves, fires and dust storms,” the report read.
The report highlighted the impacts of climate shocks on children's physical and mental health.
“Storms and floods displace families and interrupt daily life, while record-smashing heat causes widespread heatstroke and dehydration.
“Droughts cause food and nutritional insecurity, and these hazards exacerbate deadly infectious diseases, such as dengue and malaria, and lead to air-polluting wildfires,” the report read.
The organisation also said despite the climate crisis being a global phenomenon, its effects were not felt equally, as children were affected depending on age, gender, disability and ethnicity.
