Call for SADC parliamentarians to put children at heart of climate action |03 July 2025

Delegates at a regional seminar on the impact of climate change on children in Cape Town pose for a souvenir photograph with the deputy Speaker of the Parliament of Botswana, Hon. Helen Manyeneng (Photo: Moses Magadza, SADC PF)

Call for SADC parliamentarians to put children at heart of climate action

A SADC regional seminar on children’s rights and climate change got underway in Cape Town yesterday with the deputy Speaker of the Parliament of Botswana, Hon. Helen Manyeneng, challenging SADC parliamentarians to reimagine climate governance through the eyes of the region’s most vulnerable – its children.

Speaking at the opening of the seminar, Hon. Manyeneng, a member of the SADC Parliamentary Forum, made a call to action, warning that “the storm is already upon us” and children are bearing the brunt.

“We meet here not out of routine,” she told delegates gathered at the School of Public Health at the University of the Western Cape, and added, “We gather because the impact of climate change is neither abstract nor remote. It is immediate, it is devastating, and it is disproportionately borne by the most vulnerable among us, our children.”

By Moses Magadza in Cape Town, South Africa

Media and communications manager at the SADC Parliamentary Forum

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