Why Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner's daughter Violet spoke at the United Nations
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner's daughter Violet Affleck spoke at the United Nations on Tuesday.
The former couple's eldest daughter joined global leaders, policymakers, scientists and health experts at the U.N. headquarters in New York City for the inaugural Healthy Indoor Air: A Global Call to Action event, delivering a speech about the effects of long COVID-19 among children and the need for clean air infrastructures.
Wearing an N95 mask, Affleck said, "I represent a generation that in many ways already knows how we've been failed. We are told by leaders across the board that we are the future. But when it comes to the ongoing pandemic, our present is being stolen right in front of our eyes."
She added, "Young people lacked both real choice in the matter and information about what was being chosen for us."
The 19-year-old, who is a student at Yale University, spoke about the lasting effects of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, according to the World Health Organization.
According to the National Institutes of Health, SARS-CoV-2 can cause lasting damage to organs and tissues throughout the body, including the heart, brain, kidneys and blood vessels.
Research suggests that like many viruses, SARS-CoV-2 frequently mutates, which can lead to reinfection.
A recent article in JAMA Pediatrics, published in May 2025, stated that long COVID is common and affects up to 10% to 20% of children with a history of COVID-19.
Symptoms in children can last at least three months after a SARS-CoV-2 infection, according to the authors. While some children may have symptoms that do not go away, others may develop new symptoms later, the authors note.
In her speech, Affleck said she was "terrified for the children who do not or soon will not know a world without debilitating pain and exhaustion, who cannot trust their bodies to play, explore, and imagine, and who will not know the potential of their own minds, unfettered by the cognitive damage of a COVID-19 infection."
"And I am furious on their behalf," she added.
She then pleaded for clean air regulations.
"We can recognize filtered air as a human right as intuitively as we do filtered water," she said. "We can create clean air infrastructure that is so ubiquitous and so obviously necessary, tomorrow's children don't even know why we need it."
Affleck has spoken publicly about COVID-19 and clean air regulations in the past.
In July 2024, Affleck spoke at a meeting of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to argue against mask bans amid ongoing cases of COVID-19.
She also spoke at the time in favor of "air filtration and far-UVC light in government facilities, including jails and detention centers, and mask mandates in county medical facilities."
In May this year, Affleck's academic research paper, "A Chronically Ill Earth: COVID Organizing as a Model Climate Response in Los Angeles," was published in the Yale Global Health Review.
The research paper highlighted her experience during the Los Angeles wildfires in January and the parallels between responses to COVID-19 and responses to climate change.
