Weather disasters that happen more often because of climate change create conditions in which gender-based violence often spikes, according to new research.<\/P>
The study, published in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health, reviewed research from five continents and found increased violence against women and girls in the aftermath of floods, droughts, hurricanes and other extreme weather events that are becoming more frequent as the planet warms. Humanitarian organizations that respond to weather disasters should be aware of this troubling trend when planning their operations, the study authors said.<\/P>
\u201cWhen we think of climate change effects, we think of some very drastic and very visual things, things like floods, disruptions of cities, supply chain disruptions \u2014 which are all very valid and very real risks of climate change,\u201d said study author Sarah Savic Kalles\u00f8e, a public health researcher at Simon Fraser University in Canada. \u201cBut there are also some more veiled consequences that are not as easily visible or easily studied. And one of those things is gender-based violence.\u201d<\/P>
The researchers scoured online databases to find studies on rape, sexual assault, child marriage and other forms of gender-based violence following extreme weather events.<\/P>
The initial search, based on broad keywords like \u201cviolence,\u201d \u201cwomen,\u201d and \u201cweather,\u201d yielded more than 20,000 results, each of which Savic Kalles\u00f8e and her colleagues screened individually to determine whether they were relevant.<\/P>
Only 41 studies that assessed links between gender-based violence and extreme weather made the cut. The researchers then graded the robustness of each study’s methodology using standard rubrics for grading data quality. Although many of the papers were flawed and a few contradicted each other, most studies \u2014 especially the higher quality ones \u2014 reported a rise in gender-based violence following extreme weather, Savic Kalles\u00f8e said.<\/P>
For instance, one study found that new moms were more than eight times as likely to be beaten by their romantic partners after Hurricane Katrina if they had suffered storm damage than before the storm hit. Five studies of good or fair quality linked drought in sub-Saharan Africa to upticks in sexual and physical abuse by romantic partners, child marriage, dowry violence, and femicide.<\/P>
And interviews with survivors revealed that seeking disaster aid can make women more vulnerable: \u201cThe shelter is not safe for us. Young men come from seven or eight villages,\u201d said one survivor to researchers following Cyclone Roanu in Bangladesh in 2016. \u201cI feel frightened to stay in the shelters. I stay at my house rather than taking my teenage daughter to the shelters,\u201d she added.<\/P>
Lindsay Stark, a social epidemiologist at the Brown School of the Washington University in St. Louis, said the pattern \u201cis something that those of us who are working in the humanitarian space know intrinsically, because we see it all the time. So, it is very nice to see this distillation of the evidence.\u201d<\/P>
Savic Kalles\u00f8e emphasized that climate change itself doesn\u2019t directly cause gender-based violence. Instead, she and her colleagues found that gender-based violence is \u201cexacerbated by extreme weather events because it’s a type of coping strategy at the expense of women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities,\u201d she said.<\/P>
Extreme weather can place people under enormous stress, displace them, force them into crowded relief camps, destroy their livelihoods, and expose them to strangers who might do them harm. Layered over the gender roles that often drive gender-based violence, these risk factors make women especially vulnerable. For instance, a family might marry off a daughter early to have one less mouth to feed after a flood, or a man stressed after a hurricane might snap and strike his wife.<\/P>
Researchers widely recognize that humanitarian crises, like conflict or forced migration, tend to expose women and girls to violence. That climate disasters would have similar consequences isn\u2019t surprising, said Lori Heise, an expert on gender equity at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.<\/P>
However, the exact ways in which climate disasters lead to gender-based violence still aren\u2019t clear from the data. Few high-quality studies are available \u2014 and almost no data has been collected on the challenges faced by LGBTQ people following extreme weather events. The new study highlights the need for more and better research and for humanitarian organizations to engage with women and girls in climate-stressed areas about how best to protect them when disaster strikes, Savic Kalles\u00f8e said.<\/P>
\u201cGender-based violence is happening all the time, everywhere,\u201d Stark said. \u201cWe need to be preventing gender-based violence now \u2026 and to understand that if we don\u2019t act now, the situation is going to increase exponentially with the impending climate crisis that we all know is upon us.\u201d<\/P>
<\/P>
<\/P>
<\/P>
Source: Voice of America<\/P>
<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Weather disasters that happen more often because of climate change create conditions in which gender-based violence often spikes, according to new research.The study, published in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health, reviewed research from five con…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n