Africa-Press – Lesotho. Child Rights Network for Southern Africa (CRNSA) hosted the Civil Society Organization (CSO) Forum for children, whereby they were given a platform to discuss climate change. The virtual 20th COS Forum was hosted on Saturday.
The children’s forum was aimed at bringing together children from across Africa to discuss the impacts of climate change that they have experienced in their lives and what they are willing to do to alleviate such.
The forum was under the theme “Building systems to adequately serve children and adolescents in the era of climate change”. Speaking in a separate interview with Informative Newspaper, CRNSA Chairperson ‘Malineo Motšephe stated that climate change has affected children negatively.
“Lesotho is said to have about half a million families faced with food insecurity. Also, children are saying because of climate change, the land is becoming a desert.
Children want to be engaged in tree planting to protect the land, they are also saying they see land becoming smaller and nothing being done to protect the land. Protecting the land would also mean going into programmes like trying conservation and land reclamation,” she said.
She added that the CSO children Forum, with the African chapter, states that children are partners and no longer beneficiaries which means that they have to participate in decision making processes involving their own rights and welfare.
She said the ministry responsible for the rights and welfare of children in Lesotho is the Ministry of Social Development and through it children are going to hold their own Forum where they will discuss issues that affect them.
Regional Network of the Children and Young People Trust Operations Director Nyasha Simon Dick highlighted that the generation of children currently faces a lot of dangerous challenges with climate change and if actions are not taken by governments, they will not see any changes on how children develop and also enjoy their rights.
He said for every child to grow up in a safe environment there is a need for them to live a healthy life and develop positive future prospects. “If the environment that a child grows in is not favourable to their developmental needs, they will not be able to grow and realize their full potential,” he noted.
To advocate for change, he said so far local communities and child led groups are advocating for the right to a healthy environment in various ways including pushing for local authorities to allocate resources to fighting environmental degradation and environmental challenges facing their local communities.
He said the power to fighting the impact of climate change rests within young people and mobilizing in communities and effecting change requires people to work collectively.
The CSO Forum believes that children are active participants in fulfilling their own rights and they have an opinion that needs to be heard. Over the three years, CSO Forum had provided a platform for children to have their voices heard.
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