Climate change and environmental degradation force people to move magnifying existing inequities and systems of exclusion. Women, girls and gender-diverse people experience the brunt of climate change and environmental destruction because their work is often informal and/or subsistence-based and their access to resources and decision-making are constrained by gendered power dynamics.
WIMN works with feminist organizations and affected communities to better understand the nexus of climate change with gender and migration and advocate for gender responsive, rights- and justice-based responses to displacement risk, as well as to climate-related migration and displacement.
Our evolving activities:
Crises compound global injustices and inequalities, further marginalizing women, racialized people, migrants, informal economy workers, and other exploited groups. The COVID pandemic exposed systemic problems that migrant women have long understood— informality in our economy, weak health care systems, lack of a social safety net, structural racism, gender discrimination and inhumane migration regimes. The WIMN’s Statement on the Covid Crisis already raised the urgency of the climate crisis and called for a more regenerative economy to prevent climate-related migration and displacement. Ever since, our programming on climate justice continued to grow.
WIMN has always strived to ensure more attention to migration in feminist spaces but also in other silos intrinsically related. Therefore, in 2021, WIMN issued a statement urging states and COP financial mechanisms to engage affected populations in all stages of policy development and implementation; support the resilience and adaptive capacities of all women and girls; and strengthen women and girls’ economic agency and access to sustainable livelihoods, along with that of racialized and other marginalized populations. That statement aligned with calls from civil society groups, including WEDO International Climate Action Network (ICAN) towards COP.
In 2022, during the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66), WIMN organized the parallel event Migration, displacement and women’s human rights in the crisis. Mariama Williams, Iris Mungía from the Honduran Federation of Agro-Industry Workers’ Unions (FESTAGRO) and Erika Pires Ramos from the South American Network for environmental migration (RESAMA) described how climate change and extreme weather events impact women’s livelihoods. As they highlighted during their interventions, displacement builds on relations of inequality like gender, colonialism and racism and climate change does exacerbate these risks. Additionally, grassroots leaders Elisabeth Ibarra from the Guatemalan Community Coordinating Association for Health Services (ACCSS), Alicia Wallace from Equality Bahamas and Moradeke Abiodun-Badru from the National Association of Nigeria nurses and midwives (NANNM) along with Alice Ncube, specialist in disaster management and professor at the University of the Free State in South Africa, described the challenges arising from a lack of gender responsive, rights- and justice-based responses to both, displacement risks and climate-related migration and displacement.
Due to time zone constraints, partners from the West Asia and Asia Pacific regions were not able to participate in that event, so WIMN organized a second one in 2023 to ensure global representation. The conversation Migration, displacement & Human Rights in West Asia and Asia pacific regions: the climate crisis and its impact on women’s livelihoods addressed the impacts of climate change on women’s livelihoods and possible drivers of migration, along with the many challenges women are facing and the many ways they are responding with resilience, creating frontline models of solidarity.
Aya Ibrahim, Researcher at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) opened the floor by getting into the deep meaning of climate change and extreme weather events and its impact on women´s livelihoods. Then Aydah Akao from the Network of Indigenous Peoples in Solomon Islands (NIPS), Editha Barrientos from the Migrant Workers Association in Bahrain (MWAB) and Triana K. Wardani from Serikat Perempuan Indonesia (SERUNI) shared their knowledge and experiences in organizing and responding to these impacts, including displacement and migration.
These leaders shared many rich insights and reflections, describing how climate change is affecting basic resources, especially food and fresh water, and triggering population displacement. They spoke to how women are taking the lead in activities to protect the environment and hence, their lives.
Later in 2023 and until 2025, WIMN organized four Intersectoral Dialogues on Climate Change, Gender and Migration. These dialogues brought together voices and experiences from various regions, focusing on specific cases from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The discussions addressed critical issues, promoted cross-sectoral exchange, and contributed to developing a shared understanding of the challenges involved.
The first dialogue, held at the end of 2023, was Climate, Gender and Migration: Realities and Feminist Responses. Hand in hand with Katie Tobin from Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WEDO) we explored how climate change amplifies existing gender inequalities. After that, Gabriela Cunha and Laura Ostos from RESAMA; Mariama Williams; Laura Baron Mendoza from MADRE; Denise Carachure from IMUMI; and Berenice Valdez, representing the Red Mesoamericana Mujer Salud y Migración, shared specific cases to explore the intersections between climate crisis and women´s mobility, and feminist strategies of resistance.
In May 2024, we held the second dialogue Laguna Larga resists displacement. This conversation explored the forced displacement of the Mayan community Laguna Larga from Guatemala to Mexico and their gains through relentless resistance. We organized this one with former allies as ACCSS, MADRE and RESAMA along with Indignación and the Bloque Latinoamericano de migración.
And the last two were held this year, one in January, Land reclamation projects in Manila bay: Filipino fisherfolk facing displacement and strategies of resistance. The dialogue began with Terence Repelente from Pamalakaya providing a general context to the impacts of the reclamation project in the Manila Bay area. We then had the honour to listen to two other fisherfolk community activists, Norma Calusor and Rona Escarial, who shared their experience and strategies of resistance as well as the main demands from the community. The conversation was facilitated by climate justice activist, Triana K. Wardani from SERUNI.
Lastly, another one in May, Impact of flooding in the Mathare North settlement (Nairobi) and strategies of resistance. Milka Wahu Kuria from Amkafrica gave us the context to understand the case and then Bilasio Wandera, Founder of Kariobangi Paralegal Network along with Dorcas Kawira Gitau, Irene Kalondu Ligaka and Faith Rispa Nekesa helped us to understand the impact of flooding, including loss of livelihood and migration, while sharing their strategies and main demands.
Conclusions and learnings
WIMN believes in understanding the challenges that communities are facing and the strengths and demands they have as a first step. That will allow us to build meaningful alliances and a collective bottom up advocacy agenda that responds to the policies demands of those more affected by the climate crisis. We are determined to create synergies with other movements such as climate justice, feminist and labour and introduce an intersectional feminist perspective into different global policy spaces where migrant women voices should be included.
What we have learned so far draws from the work of many activists working for climate justice, primarily in the Global South:
- the patriarchal capitalist system, based on extraction, the use of fossil fuels and the exploitation of both nature and labor, has created the climate crisis
- the climate crisis is gendered and it requires feminist strategies to save us, other species and the living planet
- the climate crisis is inextricably tied to human movement:
- Both climate change and environmental degradation have greater impact on populations already enduring inequalities and historically marginalized. Some are forcibly displaced as their land, air, water, and livelihoods are impacted.
- Patriarchal capitalism drives both the climate crisis and human mobility. Those responsible must be challenged and states must be held accountable, particularly the global North, that industrialized at the expense of the planet and the majority of its peoples.
- Economic extractivism, environmental degradation, loss of livelihoods and armed conflict are inter-related in complex ways and all contribute to human mobility and forced displacement.
- The right to stay is violated when governments fail to address the impacts and consequences of the climate crisis –providing economic relief and social support– so people are displaced from their homes and communities and may move across borders for safety and survival.
- Temporary migration schemes to deal with climate displacement are not a solution. People should not migrate into temporary jobs, which limit rights and mobility.
- Women are leading with resilience to engage in mutual aid and front-line emergency responses, creating models of solidarity that hold important lessons for societies more broadly
- These communities —in countries of origin, transit and destination—are vital change agents and in most cases are being criminalised.