The European Union is about to make important decisions to reform its pesticide laws, which currently still expose children to harmful chemicals and don’t fully protect children’s health and their environment. We explain how the EU can better protect children by making children’s rights central in the new regulations.

Exposure to harmful chemicals: a neglected children’s rights issue

Pesticide pollution can have particularly damaging effects on children’s health and their environment. Children are worst affected by toxics because of their smaller bodies, rapid growth and particular behavioural habits.

The EU has an extensive body of legislation on chemicals, but it does not do enough to tackle the impacts harmful substances can have on children’s rights. By raising awareness of how children’s rights are impacted by toxic chemicals, we hope the EU will then rethink the way chemicals are being assessed and restricted, and improve access to information on these substances.  

Upcoming EU reforms as an opportunity to put an end to the use of harmful pesticides 

The existing EU Directive on pesticides adopted in 2009 aimed to better protect the most vulnerable groups, including children, by guaranteeing that the use of pesticides is minimised or prohibited in certain specific areas (“sensitive areas”). However, the implementation of this Directive, as well as the framework of pesticide authorisation, revealed severe loopholes. Shortcomings in evaluation, risk assessment and protection of sensitive areas means that children and their environment are continually exposed to harmful pesticides across the EU. 

As part of the Green Deal published in 2020, the European Commission is now proposing to reform the EU pesticides directive, with a new regulation on the sustainable use of plant protection products (SUR) seeking to better regulate pesticides. In the coming months, the EU Parliament and the Council of the EU will cast important votes on this proposed regulation. The adoption of SUR will ultimately affect children’s rights by hopefully strengthening the law on pesticides, including the restriction of the most harmful ones. The proposed SUR is an opportunity to tackle the shortcomings of the existing law and better protect children’s rights.

A children’s rights approach to pesticides law

Children have a right to be protected from threats to their health and their environment. Our position paper provides CRIN’s views on how the proposed regulation on pesticides can uphold children’s rights against exposure to harmful pesticides. It can serve as an advocacy tool for other NGOs, and as an educational document for all EU decision makers willing to work for, and contribute to, establishing an ambitious EU framework tackling harmful pesticides. 

Working together with other NGOs, we want to encourage decision makers to better consider children’s rights in the law regulating pesticides, both in the EU and in other countries.  

CRIN’s approach to ensuring the proposed SUR regulation lives up to its ambitions

Some of our recommendations include the following: 

• To adopt a broad and clear definition of ‘sensitive areas’ where the use of pesticides would be banned altogether, including railways, roads, airports, harbours, industrial or commercial units, dumps, mines, construction sites. 

• To ensure the protection of children from the impact of harmful pesticides, buffer zones must cover the widest areas possible, where pesticides with harmful properties cannot be used within a far-reaching metre distance from populations. 

• Pesticides should be restricted as much as possible. 100% of the most harmful pesticides should be completely phased out by 2030, instead of the current 50% reduction goal. 

• Banning the export of pesticides that are prohibited in the EU is a key measure to respect children’s rights worldwide. Pesticide pollution knows no boundaries, and the substances that are harmful in the EU are just as harmful in other countries. Children must be internationally protected against harmful exposure to pesticides. 

Learn more about CRIN’s project Protecting children from harmful chemicals in the EU and our focus on Toxics and children's rights.

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