Heidi Coetzee: Let’s ensure the voices of children are heard

'Children should have emerged from the stress of the pandemic to a safety net that would help them survive, learn, and be protected.' Photo / 123rf

OPINION

Many of us may remember feeling powerless as a child, knowing something was wrong but unable to change the minds of the adults around us.

For me, it was talking to my father about what I was seeing growing up in our all-white community in Johannesburg, South Africa.

At Christmas time, we’d attend church and the minister talked about loving your neighbours but he seemed to be only talking about the white neighbours, not the people living next door in other communities. I was sure that in heaven there was no segregation, so I didn’t understand why it was happening in our community. I knew it was wrong.

My father explained that what I was seeing and saying was correct, but I couldn’t change it. I was just one person, not even a grown-up person, but a child.

Those feelings inspired my passion to do things differently, to speak out for others, and to never turn my back on children’s voices.

As the chief executive of Save the Children New Zealand, I am inspired by the children and young people around the world who are insisting their voices are heard. That they can make a difference and that their opinions matter. And I am proud of our work in amplifying those voices.

Here in Aotearoa New Zealand and across the Pacific, rangatahi changemakers are leading the conversation on climate change. People like 14-year-old Nate Wilbourne, an environmentalist and coordinator for Forest and Bird’s youth hub in Nelson, who was part of our rangatahi panel sharing their views and hopes for the future with Climate Change Minister James Shaw ahead of COP27.

Or Aarthi Candadai, who led a zero-waste initiative in her school and organises community clean-ups and food drives.

Or Tokasa Senibiau, a member of our disaster risk reduction club in Fiji, a long-term initiative supported by the New Zealand Government, that brings child-centred approaches to strengthen resilience within national and local disaster preparation and management processes. Tokasa, who lives in the Valenicina settlement on the outskirts of Suva, was chosen to speak at the official opening of the inaugural Pacific Resilience Meeting Youth Forum last year and spoke of the potential for anxiety in children and young people who are experiencing and observing environmental changes such as sea level rise and coral bleaching.

New Zealand children born in 2020 are more likely to face almost six times as many heatwaves, 4.3 times as many droughts, 1.5 times as many wildfires, 1.4 times as many river floods and 1.3 as many crop failures than their grandparents under the current trajectory of global emissions. It is vital they have input into a future they will endure.

In times of crisis, children are most affected. The Covid-19 pandemic and its fallout have led to an unprecedented economic downturn, the reversal of historic gains in healthcare and education, and now the worst global cost-of-living crisis in a generation.

At home, we have seen progress by Government to reduce material hardship across the board but a massive divide continues to exist for groups within our society.

Tamariki Māori and disabled children are two times more likely than Pākehā and non-disabled children to be living with material hardship, and about one in four Pacific children live in households that are in material hardship.

Sole-parent families and households dependent on benefits are most likely to be in the most severe forms of poverty.

This divide is affecting the rights of children in these households to the essentials of a healthy home, access to food, healthcare and schooling, that every child needs and deserves to survive and thrive.

Heidi Coetzee. Photo / Hagen Hopkins

Add the dual impact of climate change and poverty and the burden on already vulnerable families becomes greater still.

A global study released in October showed two-thirds of Kiwi children are estimated to be affected by at least one extreme climate each year, with one in 10 also facing the dual burden of poverty.

Globally, that number increases to one-third of the world’s children – an estimated 774 million – living with the dual impacts of poverty and high climate risk.

Children should have emerged from the stress of the pandemic to a safety net that would help them survive, learn and be protected.

Instead, around the world far too many are unable to go to school, play with their friends, or eat enough to keep them going.

Children can and do make a difference. They have led the climate change conversation here at home while at this year’s COP27: countries formally recognised children for the first time as agents of change in addressing and responding to the crisis and agreed that governments should include children in the design and implementation of climate-related policies.

As we head into 2023, an election year, let’s ensure children are heard. Let’s help amplify their views and recommendations for a better New Zealand from home to the Beehive. As a parent, that sometimes means being brave. It means listening to your child’s voice when they say something isn’t right and needs to change. It means supporting them to bring about the change our world needs.

As adults, we owe them that.

Heidi Coetzee is CEO of Save the Children New Zealand.