We Come in the Name of Peace

Hello Everyone!

This month, we’re zoning in on the connections between gender, peace, and the environment. We know that with both climate change, environmental degradation, and armed conflict, women are much more impacted. Not because of any inherent deficit, but due to deep structural biases and gender roles that leave them vulnerable to things like limited financial means, a higher burden of unpaid care-giving responsibilities, and less legal access to land and natural resources. At the same time, we know that when women are included - in peacekeeping, in climate policies, in management decisions over natural resources, - everyone, including the environment and climate, benefits.

The Round Up

In a special chapter on climate change published recently, the report Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) 2023 Global Report: Gender Equality in Times of Crisis showed how unequal access to land-use and ownership, imbalanced decision-making, unpaid care and domestic work, gender stereotypes and other forms of social and institutional discrimination prevent women from engaging fully in climate resilient agriculture, disaster risk reduction and renewable energy. It also emphasized the key importance of women leadership in tackling climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Some countries are trying to build gender better into their peace processes. Take Yemen as an example. One of the countries most vulnerable to climate impacts, it has been razed by a violence almost decade long civil war, in which warring factions regularly weaponized water and other natural resources as part of their conflict tactics. Only recently did the two sides reach a tepid ceasefire. The country is currently experiencing what some have dubbed “the world’s worst man-made humanitarian crisis.” Over 20 million people require assistance, and 80% of households struggle to put food on the table. Last month, Yemeni civil society organizations and associations of Yemeni victims and survivors issued the Yemen Declaration for Justice and Reconciliation, emphasizing gender equality as an important part of the peace process. It follows a groundbreaking report authored last year by DCAF, together with two prominent Yemeni experts on gender, climate, and peace. The report Gender, Climate And Security In Yemen — The Linkages And Ways Forward outlined eleven recommendations for national, regional, and international stakeholders and catalyzed the formation of the Yemen Climate Change–Women, Peace and Security Nexus Network, a coalition pushing for more effective and inclusive approaches to addressing climate change at all levels of government.

Researchers have conducted the first ever global analysis of displacement, repression, criminalization, violent targeting and assassinations committed against women defenders in extractive conflicts around the world. They documented 520 cases in just the last decade alone, including 81 cases of women being murdered. The study, “A global analysis of violence against women defenders in environmental conflicts,” is important for several reasons.

We know that for the past decade, on average one environmental defender was killed every two days, but we have almost know sex-aggregated data. Only a small amount of empirical studies from civil society organizations and researchers in Africa, Asia and Latin America have documented gender-specific impacts that environmental defenders face, despite growing acknowledgement of the unique gendered risks they face (something we wrote about on our blog last month). We also know that conflicts are likely to increase. Agriculture and other extractive industries are the lead driver of deforestation - they are also the primary industries driving the global epidemic of violence against land and environmental defenders. Deforestation rose 10% in 2022 from the previous year despite pledges made by companies and governments around the world to reduce deforestation. Understanding the impact on women environmental defenders will become more necessary. But we also can’t forget the flip-side. A recent global study shows that both conservation and farming production improves when women farmers are more involved in decision-making. And including women in conservation is one of the most important ways to combat gender-based violence.

News from our blog

This month we talked with environmental peacekeeping consultant Natalia Jiménez Galindo who has been studying the nexus of gender–environment–peace for a decade and a half. She breaks down what the nexus is, how it applies to Colombia’s peace process, and why we should be paying more attention to it. Read it here.

Join the conversation - our deep dives this month

• Nearly 20 years on from a conflict that killed 5 million people and upended tenfold more lives, the Democratic Republic of Congo is once again sliding into more, not less, violence. Within a context of endless war and escalating militarization, women peace builders are working to create dialogue between rebel groups and communities. Read the story from the Pulitzer Center.

• I’ve been listening to the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security podcast on women who are trying to bring peace to conflict and post-conflict communities around the world. Episode four on the Colombian Peace Accord does a good job of laying out the critiques to how gender was - or wasn’t - included.

• For our nerds out there, we enjoyed looking through the Scottish Government's scoping study on “International climate justice, conflict and gender”. Not only does it provide a great overview of the gender-climate-conflict nexus, it also is a mini object study in how to think about and develop a gender-responsive approach to complex topics.