Gender, Conflict and the Environment: Surfacing Connections in International Humanitarian Law
Editor’s Note: This post is based on the authors’ article, “Gender, conflict and the environment: Surfacing connections in international humanitarian law”, International Review of the Red Cross, 105 (924), 2023, 1600-1622.
In our contribution to the new International Review of the Red Cross Special Issue on the protection of the environment in armed conflict, we propose the “gender-conflict-environment nexus” in order to underpin enhanced legal and operational capture of gendered environmental harm in conflict. We draw on empirical household-level analysis of the impacts of conflict to more fully understand the gendered and long-term nature of harm to the environment in armed conflict.
The Nexus between Gender, Conflict and the Environment
Empirical research is demonstrating the linkage between gender and environmental harm in armed conflict where understanding gender—the roles and expectations about women, girls, men, and boys in society—is essential to understand the scope of environmental harm and its redress through strategies aiming at sustainable peace and development (here, here). To understand the nature of this compounded harm it is useful to first understand how gender operates in armed conflict, in particular, gender inequality as a factor distributing conflict’s impacts.
Our understanding of the gendered distribution of conflict’s effects has benefitted very considerably from household-level empirical studies. Most notably, the work of Buvinic et al (2013) frames the differential impacts for men and women (first-round impacts) and the role of gender inequality deciding adaptative responses to conflict (second-round impacts). First-round impacts include excess in male mortality and morbidity resulting in disproportionate widowhood and reductions in household income and consumption. They, in turn, imply incremented responsibilities and coping strategies for women.
Meanwhile, second-round conflict effects that women experience disproportionately include, inter alia, poor nutrition and sanitation, vulnerability to poverty, long-term health impacts (disability, post-traumatic stress disorder), increased difficulty to ensure livelihood resulting in travelling longer distances, migration and displacement, which increase exposure to sexual violence. Empirical evidence thus suggests that women and girls are disproportionately affected by the exacerbation of gender inequalities in armed conflict.
Importantly, current literature demonstrates that the gendered distribution of conflict’s effects framed by Buvinic et al applies to environmental harm confirming the gender-conflict-environmental nexus, where gender inequality is a key factor distributing first and second-round harms. Drawing on empirical research, we suggest an initial mapping with key lines of environmental destruction where this typology of harm exists, thereby questioning international humanitarian law’s (IHL) traditional separation of gender and the environment: (1) the polluting effects of certain weapons; (2) pollution released in attacks on chemical, pharmaceutical and oil facilities; (3) military destruction of natural resources; and (4) military actions exacerbating the impacts of climate change.
Pollution, either from certain weapons or released in attacks on facilities (harm typologies 1 and 2)—e.g., the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam and the burning of oil wells in the 1991 Gulf War—have disproportionately affected women’s health in the short and long-term. Empirical studies have documented pregnancy loss, birth malformation, breast cancer and respiratory disease, often aggravated by women’s economic loss (due to the impaired health of men) and their belonging to ethnic minorities (here, here and here).
The destruction and exploitation of natural resources in military operations (harm typology 3) results in economic deprivation for households reliant on these resources whose distribution is clearly affected by gender roles and inequalities (Buvinic et al). A good example is nutrition bias and the subsequent tendency to allocate scarce resources to men and boys over women and girls (here) resulting in increased child stunting and female infant mortality (here).
Military actions exacerbating the effects of climate change (harm typology 4)—like deforestation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Syria—affect civilian livelihood and resilience to climate change causing displacement. The climate crisis—linked to 40% of internal armed conflicts (here) and exacerbated by these—leads to a greater burden for women and girls due to gender roles and inequalities. They include, inter alia, reduced access to firewood and water for basic chores like cooking, drinking and washing; travelling longer distances that expose them to higher rates of sexual violence; dropping school to help family maintenance, or early marriage (here, here).
Enhancing IHL and Operational Guidance
Our article proposes a “gender analysis of environmental harm” to improve IHL operation to protect both the natural environment and the civilian population as interlinked harms in armed conflict. We suggest that, when assessing environmental harm, parties to conflict may consider asking the following questions. How is the environment intrinsically affected? And, additionally, how does the gender-differentiated impact on women, girls, men, and boys compound and shape the nature of environmental harm? The operational practice of parties to conflict would benefit from integrating such gender analysis of environmental harms at two stages: ex ante of an attack as part of the proportionality test; and ex post when providing humanitarian assistance.
As part of their precautionary (ex ante) duty to minimize incidental harm against the environment, belligerent actors must respect the proportionality principle. This general protection obliges the parties to conflict to only launch an attack if the “foreseeable” incidental (civilian) harm is not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage (rule 7). This basic obligation requires a “foreseeability” test of the anticipated harm, even in the absence of scientific evidence about the environmental impact (rule 1). Critically, such assessment must include both the direct and indirect “reverberating,” “knock-on” [or] “cascading” effects of the harm on the civilian population and objects—including the environment—which are reasonably foreseeable (rule 7).
Integrating a gender analysis to IHL’s environmental risk assessment would improve the quality of the information necessary to foresee the excessiveness of harm in military operations. In line with IHL, this assessment should consider both direct/first-round and indirect/second-round environmental harms where—as stressed by this post—gender discrimination plays a key role distributing conflict’s effects. In line with increasing support for a gender approach to enhance IHL´s proportionality test (Jarvis & Gardam), the same approach should inform the practice of military manuals to assess environmental harm (Prescott).
The provision of humanitarian assistance (ex post the attack) is another stage where a gender analysis of environmental harm would enhance IHL’s operational practice guided by the principles of humanity (alleviate the suffering of the most vulnerable) and impartiality (non-discrimination). Considering the International Committee of the Red Cross´s interpretative practice—2019 Accountability to Affected People Institutional Framework and 2022 Inclusive Programming Policy—urging for an inclusive approach to gender diversity in all programming, existing guidance provides ample room to consider the nexus between gender and other inequalities in relation to the environment. A gender analysis of environmental harm would result in a better grasp of the diverse needs of women, girls, men, and boys in environmental contexts when providing humanitarian assistance enhancing the principles of humanity and non-discrimination. Furthermore, integrating the analysis in military doctrine and military-civilian interactions carries the germ of strategic policy-making for a sustainable peace.
Conclusion
As the Review volume we contributed to makes clear, better integration of environmental harm forecasting during belligerents’ targeting operations offers promising humanitarian benefits during armed conflict. We maintain that a gender analysis of environmental harm in armed conflict provides more and further reliable information on the diversity of human and environmental harms and is aligned with the direction that international law is taking to address the global environmental crisis.
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Ana Martin is researcher in international law and gender and Lecturer in Law at Universidad Internacional de la Rioja (Spain).
Catherine O’Rourke is Professor of Global Law at Durham Law School (UK) and Senior Fellow at Melbourne Law School.
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