Save the Children, yesterday, said the total number of teens displaced by climate-induced disasters in Sub-Saharan Africa nearly doubled last year.It revealed that based on reliable data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, no fewer than 1.85 million kids were dislocated at the end of 2022, compared to the one million affected by similar situations in 2021. 
  
Some of the children, the international organisation stated, were displaced multiple times, while others only once, with many living in camps or other temporary arrangements alongside extended families.
  
Flooding in Borno State and other parts led to the country having the region’s highest number of new internal displacements in the period under review, with about 2.4 million refugees. 
  
By the end of last year, at least 854,000 people remained displaced by these shocks, including estimated 427,000 children. In Somalia, five failed rainy seasons forced about 6.6 million people or 39 per cent of the population into critical hunger levels, and led to the second highest number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) put at 1.1 million.
  
The number of new internal displacements throughout the period across Sub-Saharan Africa arising from the related disasters was also three times higher than the previous year, with 7.4 million refugees compared to the 2.6 million tally of 2021. The figure captures the times people were displaced – sometimes multiple times for one individual – even if they were able to return home by the end of the year.
 
The child rights agency clarified that the displacements were the highest to have been recorded by the region. Director of Advocacy, Communication, Campaigns and Media for Save the Children’s West and Central Africa Regional Office, Vishna Shah, said: “In Nigeria and across the region, many children are terrified. They cling onto survival from one extreme weather event to the next, unsure whether unseasonable rains are a blessing for failing crops or whether they will wash away their homes.

“I am looking forward to seeing children voice their experiences and concerns to leaders at the Africa Climate Summit this week. Children have done nothing to cause this crisis – and they need the international community to deliver on climate finance commitments, including adaptation, loss and damage funding, that factor in children’s unique needs.”
  
Also speaking, Head of Advocacy, Communications, Campaigns and Media for Save the organisation’s East and Southern Africa Regional Office, Kijala Shako, noted: “When children lose their homes, they lose almost everything: their access to healthcare, education, food and safety. They also lose the building blocks for mental and emotional stability and wellbeing, like a sense of routine, their friends and the right to play.”