When Oppression Meets Vulnerability: The Gendered Dimensions of Climate-Induced Conflict

Nnaemeka Phil Eke-okocha, University of Massachusetts Boston (United States)

Climate change is widely recognized as a “threat multiplier” that worsens fragility, but its security effects are not gender-neutral, leaving women and girls more vulnerable to violence, displacement, and socio-economic exclusion. This paper explores how climate change pressures in the Lake Chad Basin intersect with structural oppression to create layered vulnerabilities. Climate stressors like drought and land degradation increase resource competition and insecurity, disproportionately affecting women and girls. Structural oppression, such as barriers to land ownership and limited mobility, forces women to depend on climate-sensitive resources and reduces their adaptive capacity, making them especially vulnerable. Consequently, women face greater risks during climate-driven crises. Using feminist human security theory, the study emphasizes how power imbalances, cultural norms, and governance failures sustain gendered insecurities amid the climate crisis. It argues that effective environmental peacebuilding must incorporate feminist and intersectional approaches that recognize care, agency, and relational resilience as key security practices.