Prioritise the world’s most vulnerable population: Mardini

A man improvises a tent at the entrance of his house after losing the other rooms due to erosion on the beachfront of Saint Louis. Pic/AP, PTI

Robert Mardini, director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), has called on the more than 100 world leaders attending the ongoing UN climate summit, to prioritise the planet's most vulnerable populations who face the dual challenge of armed conflicts and the dire consequences of climate change.

Mardini spoke to Xinhua news agency on the sidelines of the ongoing 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change held in Glasgow, Scotland. He identified three main priorities for the participants.

"The first one is for the international community to acknowledge that actually people living in armed conflicts and in contests affected by climate change are the most vulnerable and are to be really prioritised. The second one is the collective bold effort from the international community to focus on genuine and meaningful mitigation measures to reduce carbon emissions and to avert the climate crisis in the first place," he said.

"And the third one is really linked to the most vulnerable (populations). They should be top of the list in terms of support, (but) the fact of the matter today (is) they are totally neglected."

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