LAUNCHING 25 May 2023

This roundtable will focus on the various and unique pathways of poor health that current children are facing.

This event is not intended to alarm, but to put the child to old age health trajectory into the context of planetary dysregulation and its secondary effects. Currently, children are experiencing multiple stressors or pathways of poor health; forced displacement, family separation, pollution of water, land, and air, acute weather events, malnutrition, poverty, and a global pandemic that is causing long term effects (source, source, source). 

One could argue that ‘children growing up in crisis’ is not new: there always have been crises. This, of course, is true, and by no means do we want to downplay past and ever-existing crises, such as conflict and war, or poverty.

Yet, it seems that, right now, several global crises are clashing, affecting the whole world's child population. Moreover, some of the long-standing crises are getting worse. For example, globally, environmental pollution (i.e., pollution of the air, the water, and the soil) is getting worse (source), negatively affecting both human health and the health of the planet.

Further, the number of children who are forcibly displaced (e.g., due to conflicts or disasters) is at a peak and further increasing, with over 30 million children worldwide forcibly displaced in 2020 (source).

Adding to the severity of today’s global crises is that they not only happen at the same time but also aggravate each other. For example, pandemic, war, and climate change have all increased levels of global poverty, one of the most detrimental, long-standing crises in the world (source).