Gender-Based Violence: Somalia’s Devastating Climate Change Outcome
Written by Fran Woodworth
Once my country was famous for its loveliness
Its soil is gold beyond price
A sanctuary, it's a place of peace and safety
Tonight I celebrate my country
And may it be healed by justice!
Somalia, known as the “nation of poets,” is rich in literature like Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf’s “Harmony.” She writes about Somalia’s exceptional geography (the country has the longest coastline on mainland Africa, beautiful white sand beaches and clear water, rolling mountains, and remarkable natural diversity). She also writes about the extraordinary spirit and strength of the Somali people who have faced conflict, poverty, and more recently, the devastating effects of anthropogenic climate change.
Image Credit: Luis Tato, 2022.
Somalia, with all its potential, is sadly on the front lines of climate change. In recent years, the country has missed several rainy seasons and endured record drought. The ripple effect has been a spike in gender-based violence.
This East African state offers a window into the complex relationship between climate change and gender-based violence (GBV). The country’s history of colonial subjugation and civil conflict – combined with geographic vulnerability to global warming – exemplifies how climate change can amplify existing inequities and intensify violence towards women and girls.
GBV denotes harmful behaviors directed principally towards women and girls on the basis of their gender, including psychological and emotional abuse, physical violence, sexual violence, coercion, survival sex, female genital mutilation, selective malnourishment or undernourishment of female children, and femicide.
In 2021, the UN reported an 80% increase in GBV in Somalia. Women and children represent 93% of those who reported incidents of GBV in 2021, and 74% of reports were from survivors in displaced communities.
Consider Somalia’s colonial legacy, oppression under a military dictatorship over two decades, and resource and power competition among clans and militia groups. The last 30 years of civil war are rooted partly in colonial partitioning and economic policies during the 19th century (Britain and Italy established British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland in 1884 and 1889, respectively). Wealth and infrastructure disparities between the Somali lands exacerbated political tribalism and rivalry among clans, even after the two lands united and gained independence in 1960. Nine years later, the assassination of President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke triggered a coup by the Supreme Revolutionary Council, led by Major General Jallee Mohamed Siad Barre. This marked the beginning of Barre’s 22 year-long military dictatorship. Barre was eventually ousted by clan-based warlords and rebel groups in 1991, and the resulting power vacuum sparked a civil war. Rivalries between nationalist and Islamic groups, clans, and militias – all aiming to carve out and govern their own territories – have made regional and international peace-building and state-building efforts arduous.
In a state unfortunately seized by conflict with governance that lacks sufficient justice, Somali women and girls are already particularly vulnerable to gendered violence. GBV is enabled by the absence of social, economic, and political security for women and girls, along with a culture of impunity for the perpetrators; thus, the very conditions that characterize humanitarian crises such as that in Somalia – which degrade social, economic, and political stability – are also the conditions that subject women and girls to higher rates and intensities of GBV. In other words, humanitarian crises increase the risk of gender-based violence.
In addition, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has disrupted fuel costs and food production and transportation. The two countries together provided almost all of Somalia’s wheat before the invasion, and now food prices – already elevated by the pandemic – have climbed even higher with Russia continuing to block Ukraine’s principal grain export route in the Black Sea.
To top this, climate change exacerbates social issues such as those experienced in Somalia. The increased intensity and frequency of extreme climate events can contribute to resource scarcity, food insecurity, livelihoods collapse, conflict, weak governance, and displacement. Climate change acts as a ‘threat multiplier’ in this way. In Somalia, prolonged drought (an effect of anthropogenic climate change) has decimated agriculture. This has contributed to resource competition and conflict among clan and militia groups, along with displacement and rapid urbanisation. Droves of people who have lost their livelihoods have migrated to overcrowded internally displaced persons (IDP) settlements in urban centres, which often lack adequate services and put additional strain on the government. Many of those who stayed in rural areas have become targets of al-Shabaab, the Islamist militant group that has exploited the population’s vulnerability by holding them hostage to the limited resources available. Climate shocks have aggravated the civil war’s underlying conditions, such as scarcity of resources, conflict, and political instability.
Such social indicators, made worse by climate change, perpetuate patriarchal practices and violence. Heightened conflict, poverty, and resource scarcity can intensify community and household stress, prompt negative coping mechanisms, and weaken social services. All of these factors increase the rate and intensity of GBV.
Take, for instance, that natural disasters such as drought or floods put stress on communities and households, particularly by way of food insecurity. Community stress and food insecurity are linked to increases in GBV, especially intimate partner violence (IPV). When men are psychologically and/or socially stressed (due to climate shocks and subsequent food insecurity), female household members and children sometimes bear the brunt of their frustrations. Disasters can also increase the domestic workload for women – e.g. they may need to walk farther for resources like food, water, and firewood – and the additional workload (and subsequent reduction in women’s/girl’s responsiveness to domestic demands) can increase household tension and GBV. Beyond this, traveling greater distances for resources on someroutes increases their exposure to sexual assault.
The effects of climate change can also provoke negative coping mechanisms involving gendered violence, such as survival sex, child marriage, and female genital mutilation (FGM) to increase girls’ marriageability. Resource scarcity can leave women and girls more likely to be coerced into sexual exploitation in exchange for goods and services. A family faced with livelihood collapse because of a flood may resort to marrying their child for the bride price or dowry or to reduce pressure on the family’s limited resources. Additionally, a family or community may need to migrate to escape a drought or other climate change-related disaster. While migration can be a successful coping mechanism, displacement increases the risk of GBV for women and girls, both in transit and in displacement camps. Lack of food and sanitation facilities in refugee and IDP camps can leave women and girls susceptible to blackmail and sexual assault, and overcrowding, poor lighting, and reduced privacy increase their exposure to violence as well. Away from their communities and social support systems, reporting and protection mechanisms are often out of reach. Additionally, girls who are displaced and forced to leave school are more vulnerable to child marriage.
The impact of disasters on infrastructure and resources also affects the availability and quality of gender-based violence services, which restricts survivors’ channels of reporting and escape.
Continued violence against women and girls causes serious psychological and physical harm, and perpetuates gender inequalities in the long term. These include higher poverty rates and lower education rates among women, as well as the exclusion of women from decision-making spaces.
Given the clear link between climate change and GBV, women and girls should be granted explicit international legal protections. Currently there are no legally binding international agreements that directly address sexual and gender-based violence that is related to climate change. Although an array of legal agreements include gender considerations, a more concerted and coordinated global effort is in order.
The existing piecemeal legal framework includes the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979. CEDAW’s General Recommendation Number 37 stands out because it links climate change to the root causes of gender inequality, including violence against women. However, the Committee’s General Recommendations and Concluding Observations are not legally binding, and can only provide guidance to states (without any means of enforcement).
Some Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) have also tried to center gender issues: for instance, the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) recognizes “the vital role that women play in the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity,” and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) highlights women’s role in places affected by desertification or drought. However, these gender considerations – although important – do not provide protections enforced by hard law for people affected by GBV in the context of climate change.
There is a need to better spotlight the specific GBV and climate change nexus in the international climate change regime. Climate finance mechanisms (like the Green Climate Fund and the Global Environmental Facility) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) could provide opportunities to address gender inequality in the specific context of climate change at a global level. For example, a GBV-focused NDC could give victims legal recourse in the case that the state fails to protect them from GBV, which could eventually serve as the basis for a legal claim to an international human rights court (imposing an international obligation on states to prevent GBV in the context of climate change). This could provide much needed strengthening of domestic legal frameworks to protect women and girls from GBV, in Somalia and elsewhere.
The pervasiveness and severity of GBV in Somalia, a country disproportionately affected by climate change, shows us the importance of centring women in climate policy. Not only is it imperative that climate change be mitigated as soon as possible; mitigation and adaptation measures must specifically aim to ensure women’s and children’s human rights. This includes essential healthcare, reporting channels, support for survivors of gender-based violence, and protections for women and girls displaced within and across borders. The responsibility of governments to confront climate change goes hand in hand with their responsibility to prevent GBV; to fully protect the dignity and human rights of those most adversely affected by climate change, climate policy making spaces and the policies themselves must include women.
These efforts will help break the cycle of conflict and poverty that is compounded by the effects of climate change – itself a product of global power disparities and unequal levels of development. In the poet Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf’s words, “injustice is infectious.” Rather than writing off this injustice as a lost cause, we should see Somalia in terms of what we can do to confront global warming and its unequal effects. International climate action offers us an opportunity to address the inequalities that underlie humanitarian crises and climate change, and to uphold fundamental human rights.
