Women Displaced by Climate Change Are Telling Us What They Need. It's Past Time for Us To Listen.

Women Displaced by Climate Change Are Telling Us What They Need. It’s Past Time for Us To Listen.
3/23/2023 by Jocelyn Wyatt
Women and girls make up 80 percent of the people displaced by climate change. Once displaced, not only do they have to survive, they have to care for their families—all while evading the heightened risk of violence.



Zeinab. (Courtesy)

Thirty years ago, at the start of the ongoing Somali civil war, Zeinab’s parents fled their home in Somalia, seeking safety and stability for their family in Canada. Today, Zeinab is back in the Horn of Africa, currently based in Nairobi, Kenya, as a humanitarian worker with Alight, the global aid organization I lead. Zeinab is currently focused on raising global awareness and action to help more than 20 million people facing critical food insecurity in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. The region is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years—widely believed to be linked to climate change—along with the world’s worst food emergency. A famine in 2011 in Somalia claimed 260,000 lives (half of them before famine was officially declared), but with a sixth consecutive failed rainy season expected from March to May, the situation now is even more dire. The U.N. reports that 8.3 million Somalis, nearly half the population, will require humanitarian assistance and protection this year. The food insecurity and malnutrition brought on by the drought have left many with no other option but migration. “Where we came from there wasn’t even a cup of water, never mind any food,” a group of Somali women told me at a food distribution site last fall.



“I couldn’t feed my kids. I didn’t have a choice. It was either death or life,” said Ayan, a mother of three.
Ayan. (Courtesy)

Like many of us who work closely with people who have been displaced—whether by climate change, conflict or persecution—Zeinab often finds herself working against common misperceptions, blind spots and biases. “When we think about refugees, we have this tendency to reduce them to the worst thing that has ever happened to them,” said Zeinab. “But the reality is, people who have experienced the trauma of displacement are not only multifaceted people—they are experts on their needs, with a lot of ideas and solutions for how to improve life in their communities. It’s just a matter of listening to them and providing the resources required to co-create solutions with them.”

Since 2010, Alight has been working in Somalia on a humanitarian response to famine. In visits to camps for internally displaced people (IDPs), we sit with families displaced by climate-induced drought, listen to how they want to restart their lives in urban areas and redesign services alongside them. More often than not in these visits, we find ourselves listening to women.



The U.N. estimates that women and girls account for 80 percent of the people displaced by climate change. In places like Somalia, which ranks fourth lowest for gender equality globally, laws that limit women’s abilities to own assets mean they have less access to economic opportunities and tend to depend more on natural resources for their livelihoods, which makes them more vulnerable to displacement. Once women are displaced, not only do they have to survive, they have to care for their families, all while evading the heightened risk of sexual and domestic violence.

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https://msmagazine.com/2023/03/23/women-displacement-climate-change-violence/