Frequent climate crises widen gender inequality gap and erode human rights progress

‘There is no climate justice without gender justice,” Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate has said.

This rings especially true for young women and girls in climate-vulnerable regions that experience compounded climate events and have their human rights exchanged for the basic needs of their families. 

Hanadi Yusuf Dawud, a 25-year-old gender equality advocate and psychologist in Ethiopia – where conflict and climate change have escalated the effects of internal fighting – told Daily Maverick that during natural and human-made disasters, the most vulnerable people were women and girls.

“More than 600,000 students have dropped out of school and they’re staying home, which has increased gender-based violence in many ways. Women travel long distances to fetch water and along the way, they get raped and assaulted. And the children who stay at home, people know that they are home alone and they get raped by strangers and family members,” said Dawud.

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“Homelessness among children has also increased. Children get raped while trekking for a bottle of water,” said Dawud, adding that the number of child brides had increased significantly since 2022 as drought and conflict continued. 

According to Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund, child marriage increased by an average of 119% across Ethiopia’s Somali Region, Oromia, and the Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s Region between January and April 2021 and during the same period in 2022.

Millions of people were displaced during the Ethiopian government’s two-year war with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which ended with a peace agreement in November 2023. Smaller wars over land and identity continue to be fought across the country.

Child brides are often married off to much older men in exchange for a dowry that will carry the family through periods of climate-induced droughts, or in exchange for cattle to feed the family, Dawud said.

The gender equality activist said that having one less child to feed in the household made matters less stressful for families enduring prolonged droughts. 

Dawud said that the current situation made it difficult for professionals such as herself to intervene when matters of life and death – as a result of starvation – were on the table; especially when aid organisations had little to offer in the way of food and water.

Angel Morithi, director of East and Southern Africa for Plan International, told Daily Maverick that many gains made by her organisation – which advocates for the rights of children and girls – had been eroded as a result of multiple climate and environmental shocks and humanitarian disasters.

‘Unimaginable decisions’