While climate change disrupts communities globally through environmental catastrophes, there is minimal research conducted and highlighted toward how women and girls are impacted and exposed to violence. By examining how environmental disasters serve as a catalyst toward violence against women and children through synthesis of publications and case studies, we can obtain insight toward the patterns, correlations, and trends related to climate-induced disasters on gender-based violence incidents, and evaluate how poor emergency relief by state actors disproportionately impacts women and girls globally through the domestic, social, and structural spheres.
Introduction
The catastrophes produced by climate change are globally recognized as a major disrupter of ecosystems, economies, and societal functioning as they aggravate an interconnected network of consequences felt by over 3.6 billion individuals (World Health Organization, 2023), from extensive resource scarcity to thousands of additional deaths. Another pressing global emergency is violence against women and girls– particularly minorities. Within the domestic sphere, a woman is killed by a family member every 11 minutes (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2021) and up to 753 million married women have experienced male partner violence in their lifetimes (World Health Organization, 2021). A global estimate of women married over the age of 15 additionally highlights that 6% have experienced violence by someone unknown or beyond their domestic sphere (World Health Organization, 2021), thus demonstrating how women and girls face extensive barriers to equity and safety worldwide.
While climate change and gender-based violence as a human rights issue have been thoroughly studied by scholars and practitioners striving to implement solutions for their multifaceted impacts, literature fails to thoroughly examine their intersection and how climate change uniquely acts as a catalyst of violence towards women and girls globally. As The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (2021) reports, while international attention to how consequences of climate change is gendered has grown, there is minimal understanding of how the two topics intersect in academic and policy discourse.
The rationale for this article stems from the impact of climate change not being gender-neutral, and that women and girls who face existing socio-economic inequalities bear a disproportionate burden of climate change impacts. As discourse and practical implementation of relief neglects the gendered impacts for a generalized aid approach, there is a fostered aggravation of gender-based violence globally.
This post strives to expand literary discourse by exploring why and how emergency relief response by state actors intensifies intimate partner and community violence, and examines the systemic issues that underpin these spheres such as societal norms, gender roles, and unstable patriarchal power dynamics. The academic neglect on the topic perpetuates the implementation of poor policy and gender-blind strategies by governments and humanitarian aid societies, thus contributing to overarching failure of state actors to effectively execute emergency relief. By exploring the key theoretical and practical frameworks that underpin gender-based violence alongside environmental disasters, this article can expand present discourse to ensure safe integration of gender-responsive strategies and reform to non-equitable structural systems.
Results
By analyzing patterns apparent within various literature, key themes emerged which sought to highlight why climate change impacts women and girls by exacerbating violence. Predominantly, the failure of state actors such as governments and public institutions to address the magnification of gender-based violence due to climate-induced disasters through poor policies and gender-blind aid approaches fostered a cascade of multifaceted problems which reinforced this intersection worldwide. The neglect of nuance and anti-essentialist relief strategies perpetuated cycles of violence within the domestic and social spheres with poor structures that value misogyny, hegemonic patriarchy, and oppressive gender roles. Within intimate family life and domestic circles, publications utilized quantitative data to highlight the profound explosion of gender-based violence as a result of climate change.
According to the United Nations Development Programme, when climate catastrophes destroy regions where agriculture is a source of income and food security, men select unhealthy coping mechanisms such as drinking to aid with the fear and anxiety of economic loss. Consequently, the loss of power and emasculation is manifested through physical and emotional violence against women and girls within the home (Gevers et al., 2020). When women are forced to find laborious work to supplement lost household income, they are less inclined to agree to sexual intercourse with their spouses, thus resulting in sexual violence (Gevers et al., 2020). For families who face economic struggle due to the devastation of their sources of income, many turn to marry their young daughters for protection and survival as governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) provide them with no other alternatives.
During a drought in 2010 in Ethiopia, data revealed higher rates of underage girls being sold into marriage so the family could obtain livestock in exchange to ensure survival for all; however, as droughts appear again, relief planning by NGOs and collaborating governments in the Horn of Africa are more efficiently working to prevent gender-based violence, such as implementing contingency funds, promoting resilience programs, and better supporting households with young children (United Nations office for the Coordination of Human Affairs (OCHA), 2017). This growth in relief procedures is unfortunately not universal– in Bangladesh, underage marriage remains prevalent due to the widespread belief that the increased social risk to sexual violence due to climate change will make their young daughters unmarriable, and strive to find older men capable of caring for them during their adolescent years (Ahmed et al., 2019). To avoid domestic violence, poverty, and for survival, transactional sexual encounters that heighten risk of sexual diseases such as HIV and AIDs occur by farmers and landlords who wield sex as power (Gevers et al., 2020).
Within public domains, when environmental disasters destroy family crops and agricultural sources of income, women are forced to work in remote spaces such as illegal logging areas for survival (Desai and Mandal, 2021, p. 140). Here, the unsafe exposure to male-dominated spaces with minimal safety produces a significant risk of harassment, sexual assault, and rape cases.
In addition, the illegal logging spaces occupy land which belongs to communities of Indigenous women and girls. The destruction of their environment and social exploitation creates extensive risk of sexual violence, and the competition over their protected resources garner further male gender-based harm (Manuel et al., 2018). Due to the multitude of intersecting factors that oppress Indigenous woman and girls as a minority, such as generational trauma, racism, governmental and legal neglect, and coping mechanisms like alcoholism within communities, state actors.
When climate catastrophes force women into displacement camps and refugee centres, poor planning and gender-neutral policies set women up to be exposed to extensive sexual violence and physical harm. Basic daily tasks such as changing clothes and showering without protection and in male-dominated spaces expose them to magnified rates of danger (Desai and Mandal, 2021, p. 140). Women who face rape in these spaces are often extensively traumatized and systematically oppressed so that seeking justice could ultimately prevail harm instead of aid– if jurisprudence and society does not provide aid to a woman abandoned by her husband or divorced, silence becomes the default option (Braaf, 2016).
According to the World Health Organization (2017), out of ten women and girls, eight are responsible for obtaining clean drinking water. When climate-related disasters destroy nearby sources of clean water, they must venture to far spaces that also heighten their risk of sexual violence by those unknown. This exacerbation of violence additionally extends to their domestic lives; a study from Pakistan found that despite drought and poor environmental functioning, husbands held their wives to the same standard of procuring clean drinking water as prior to the induction of climate change disasters. When these women failed to uphold imposed standards, they faced a magnified rate of physical and sexual violence (Owren, 2021).
After earthquakes in Japan and Haiti and Hurricane Katrina in the United States, a systematic review conducted by Thurston et al. 2021 found significant increases in sexual assault amongst the general population of women; however, for female university students in the United States, no increase was noted in campuses directly impacted by the hurricane, thus postulating that the presence of community security and police directly impacted the safety of vulnerable women. For those who faced sexual violence due to earthquakes as a catalyst, Thurston et al. 2021 note that extensive neglect of trustworthy policing systems, officers taking bribes in exchange for perpetrator freedom, and shame of victims fostered these events as no consequential system was present.
After wildfires occur in Australia, there is a consistent pattern which highlights an increase in intimate partner and community sexual violence. As Parkinson and Zara (2013) note, ineffective relief of post traumatic stress disorder often manifests through physical and sexual violence. While firefighters and frontline responders to these fires did not receive governmental mental support, women abused additionally faced neglect as qualitative interviews highlighted how police officers encouraged women trying to report rape and assault to have patience and wait for matters to improve. Failure of governments to respond to the devastation caused by climate change by providing adequate and accessible mental health resources perpetuates harm to women who face further barriers to obtain help as they are shamed and ignored. As Desai and Mandal (2021) note, despite the rapidly growing plethora of information which suggests that climate change is magnifying existing poor social structures and systems which further oppress women and girls, there is minimal mention of this within treaties and international jurisprudence.
In particular, principles of intersectionality are entire missing from the 2015 Paris Agreement just as they were from the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This illustrates the poor growth done to mitigate the ever-growing harm against women and how state actors have failed to protect their people.
Analysis of Results
The findings amongst the varying articles and publications highlight the complexity of existing social and economic structures underlying the varying factors that comprise the intersection of gender-based violence as magnified by climate change. Predominantly, the overarching structure that reinforces this relationship is the failure of state actors to enforce effective gendered policies, emergency relief, security measures, and jurisprudence to protect women and girls globally. As a result, women feel the consequences of this poor emergency planning and relief throughout every domain in their lives– their intimate lives and homes morph into unrecognizable spaces of private abuse and their social aspirations and ambitions become wrought with fear and devastating violence.
This cascade of consequences from the public to domestic spheres propel women into spaces that subject them to sexual abuse and violence due to climate catastrophes exacerbating present poor systems such as the lack of gendered security and perpetuated vulnerabilities.
Within intimate partner violence, women are victim to the heightened manifestation of poor hegemonic gender norms and patriarchal ideas of masculinity through the assertion of power as physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Legal systems and social rules that ostracize women who speak out against gender-based violence and seek divorce amplify harm by further isolating them socially and creating further barriers for economic success. Failure of governmental bodies to foster economic investment in food security and poverty relief when environmental disasters occur enhance the rate of underage women trafficked and sold into marriage with older men.
The oversight of gendered predisposition to violence within remote spaces and failure to implement accessible reporting systems with trustworthy police members further highlights how climate change functions as a catalyst for abuse and sexual violence globally. Just as intersecting identities, socioeconomic positionality, and geographical location reinforce extensive nuance regarding how climate change inadvertently bolsters abuse, it is critical that state actors, NGOs, and grassroots organizations collaborate to build gendered policies that address accompanying structural issues such as patriarchy and misogyny to build better social aid.
These policies must be trauma and evidence- informed, strengthen interventions, and foster resilience amongst all members of communities. Social programs and education must additionally address structural issues that enhance oppression against women, such as the dismantlement of patriarchal values, and empower women with access to opportunity as agents of change. To evolve discourse and better understand how gender-based violence is exacerbated by climate change, further quantitative and qualitative data built on an intersectionality framework is required with an emphasis on nuance and anti-essentialist paradigms for each community examined.
References
Ahmed, K. J., Haq, S. M. A., & Bartiaux, F. (2019). The nexus between extreme weather events, sexual violence, and early marriage: a study of vulnerable populations in Bangladesh. Population and Environment, 40(3), 303–324. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-019-0312-3
Braaf, R. (2016). Addressing the intersections of climate change, energy, environmental degradation and gender-based violence. https://www.sparkblue.org/system/files/2022-03/UNDP_GBV%20Interventions%20in%20Environmental%20Programming_Seoul.pdf
Desai, B. H., & Mandal, M. (2021). Role of Climate Change in Exacerbating Sexual and Gender-Based Violence against Women: A New Challenge for International Law. Environmental Policy and Law, 51(3), 137–157. https://doi.org/10.3233/epl-210055
Gevers, A., Musuya, T., & Bukuluki, P. (2020, January 28). Why climate change fuels violence against women. United Nations Development Programme. https://www.undp.org/blog/why-climate-change-fuels-violence-against-women
Manuel, K., Laboucan-Massimo, M., & Deranger, E. (2018, February 3). Violence Against the Land is Violence Against Women. Indigenous Climate Action. https://www.indigenousclimateaction.com/entries/violence-against-the-land-is-violence-against-women#:~:text=Women%20are%20the%20most%20vulnerable
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. (2021). Human Rights, The Environment And Gender Equality Key Messages https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/2022-03/Final_HumanRightsEnvironmentGenderEqualityKM.pdf
Owren, C. (2021). Understanding and addressing gender-based violence as part of the climate emergency. https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/CSW/66/EGM/Expert%20Papers/Cate%20OWREN_CSW66%20Expert%20Paper.pdf
Parkinson, D., & Zara, C. (2013). AJEM Apr 2013 - The hidden disaster: domestic violence in the aftermath of natural disaster | Australian Disaster Resilience Knowledge Hub. Australian Journal of Emergency Management , 28(2). https://knowledge.aidr.org.au/resources/ajem-apr-2013-the-hidden-disaster-domestic-violence-in-the-aftermath-of-natural-disaster/
Thurston, A. M., Stöckl, H., & Ranganathan, M. (2021). Natural hazards, disasters and violence against women and girls: a global mixed-methods systematic review. BMJ Global Health, 6(4), e004377. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-004377
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). (2017). Horn of Africa: A call for action. https://reliefweb.int/sites/%20reliefweb.int/files/resources/HOA_CALL_FOR_ACTION_Leaflet_Feb2017_1.pdf
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (2021). Killings of women and girls by their intimate partner or other family members. https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/statistics/crime/UN_BriefFem_251121.pdf
World Health Organization. (2021, March 9). Violence Against Women Prevalence Estimates. Www.who.int. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240022256
World Health Organization. (2023). Climate Change. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health
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