Advancing Gender-Inclusive Responses to Climate-Driven Displacement

Abstract

Climate change is a rapidly growing cause of displacement globally with the impacts of it most keenly felt by marginalized groups. The Women’s Refugee Commission is a research and advocacy organization working to ensure women’s and girls' voices are included in humanitarian policy and practice. Given the intersection between climate change and displacement, they are well-suited to improve gendered analysis in climate-driven displacement policies and practice. Reviewing academic and gray literature highlighted the challenges of describing the differential impacts of climate change and the relative lack of gender-inclusive and intersectionality in programming and policy. These interact with existing vulnerabilities for displaced people, particularly women and girls to increase risk. Interviews with professionals in humanitarian and development practice and research also revealed responses to climate change and displacement are often responsive short-term investment with a lack of investment for proactive long-term solutions. In response to this, the Women’s Refugee Commission should expand their focus to include those left behind as climate degrades, strengthen intersectional gender analysis in displacement studies, increase involvement of women and girls in climate resilience policy development, and use their research to address the lack of representative disaggregated data in climate-displacement research.