Children and climate change: children's rights in climate-induced displacement governance.
Author
Ambroggio, Irene
Term
4. semester
Education
Publication year
2025
Submitted on
2025-10-15
Abstract
Denne afhandling undersøger, hvordan børns rettigheder udfordrer de dominerende globale styringsformer for klimainduceret fordrivelse. Med et diskursivt, poststrukturalistisk og konstruktivistisk blik analyseres konkurrerende fortællinger: en fremherskende paternalistisk-sikkerhedsdiskurs, der fremstiller fordrevne som trusler eller passive ofre, og en voksende post-paternalistisk, rettighedsbaseret moddiskurs, forstærket af ungdomsledte retssager og FN-komitéens Generelle Kommentar nr. 26. Ved hjælp af framinganalyse, intersektionalitet og Bacchis WPR-metode undersøger studiet, hvordan problemet konstrueres, med hvilke antagelser, tavsheder og effekter. Analysen argumenterer for, at trods offentlige tilslutninger til børns rettigheder formes politiske og juridiske svar fortsat af statslige sikkerheds- og økonomiske logikker, hvilket udgør en organiseret hykleri. Den rettighedsbaserede diskurs positionerer børn som politiske subjekter og forandringsaktører og omfortolker klimafordrivelse som en børneretskrise, men dens transformative potentiale begrænses af vedvarende magtstrukturer og mangler i den internationale beskyttelse af klimarelateret mobilitet.
This thesis examines how children’s rights challenge dominant global governance approaches to climate-induced displacement. Using a discursive, post-structural and constructivist lens, it analyzes competing narratives: a prevailing paternalist-security discourse that frames displaced people as threats or passive victims, and a growing post-paternalist, rights-based counter-discourse amplified by youth-led litigation and the UN Committee’s General Comment No. 26. Drawing on framing analysis, intersectionality, and Bacchi’s WPR method, the study explores how the problem is constructed, with what assumptions, silences, and effects. The analysis argues that despite public commitments to child rights, policy and legal responses remain shaped by state-centric security and economic logics, amounting to organized hypocrisy. While the rights-based discourse positions children as political subjects and agents of change and reframes climate displacement as a child rights crisis, its transformative potential is constrained by enduring power structures and gaps in international protection for climate-affected mobility.
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