Climate-induced crop failures, death of livestock and water shortages increase food insecurity and malnutrition. This makes it harder for families to maintain stable incomes and consistent supplies of food.
Climate-induced drought and flooding make agriculturally dependant communities poorer and more desperate for income. In some countries such as Somalia, Somaliland, Sudan and Kenya, bride-price represents an income for families with daughters. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is often performed to enhance a girl’s marriageability in communities where marriage helps guarantee economic security and social inclusion.
Drought, flooding and food insecurity do not cause FGM on their own. But in communities where FGM is bound up with marriageability, chastity and bride wealth, climate stress can make abandoning the practice harder. When livestock die, crops fail and aid programmes shrink, families may return to practices they see as protecting girls’ marriage prospects and the household income attached to them.
So with added climate pressures, ending this abusive practice becomes much more challenging. My research in Somaliland and Kenya shows that understanding the increasing environmental threats is key to reducing rates of FGM.
National legislation, community dialogues and workshops, school-based schemes focused on empowering young girls and boys to make different decisions, plus health messaging all help reduce the prevalence of FGM. But despite some progress, the climate crisis exacerbates existing gender inequality and violence against girls including FGM.
Globally, more than 230 million girls and women have undergone FGM, sometimes called female genital cutting. Over 144 million affected girls and women live in Africa. Over 80 million live in Asia. More than 6 million live in the Middle East. Prevalence remains extremely high in several countries, including Somalia, Guinea and Djibouti. The most extreme form of FGM, known as infibulation, involves the cutting and sealing of the labia and often the removal of the clitoris. This form is very common in Somalia and Somaliland.
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Female genital mutilation is on the rise in Africa: disturbing new trends are driving up the numbers
Girls in Sanaag, Somaliland, have shared how much they want to end to FGM. One young woman reflected: “While instability due to conflicts and climate change are happening in communities making resources scarce nothing is going to change with the bad social issues like FGM.” She goes on to say that when crises deepen, people start to openly voice negative views again advocating a return to FGM. “Elders or older people oppose gender equality and women’s rights in the community. They want to see women’s position in the community as it was in the previous times.”
Her reflection shows how climate consequences can offer an excuse or distraction that allows some people to reassert traditional values and reestablish FGM.
One 25-year-old woman in Sanaag shared that men believe stopping FGM is a loss for girls. “Women are beginning to want change to happen but not all of them,” she said. “Youth are aware due to knowing its problems and want it to stop.”
In Sanaag, health education about the harms posed by FGM has shifted the views of many young people. But the UN’s goal to end FGM by 2030 is a challenging one.
Due to increasing climate extremes, the voices of girls and young women in places like Sanaag are becoming fainter – just when support from legislation and vocal activists is becoming more prominent. Sanaag is not an outlier. The climate crisis is creating a barrier to ending FGM in countries such as Kenya and Sudan too.
The price of FGM
Some communities in Somaliland, Sudan and Kenya, justify this violence as a way to preserve girls’ sexual purity. A girls virginity is seen as necessary to safeguard family honour in preparation for marriage.
In Somalia, FGM is often considered a religious requirement whereas in places such as Samburu, Kenya, the Maasai view it as an important marker of cultural identity and a rite of passage for women.
Following FGM, girls are presented as pure at the point of marriage. This helps secure a good match with a family able to pay a high bride price.
As the climate crisis intensifies, so too does the pressure to guarantee a girl’s marriageability – and the financial security that comes with this.
Matyas Rehak/Shutterstock
In Kenya, where many young girls are now voicing their rights and rejecting FGM, climate change is eroding the Maasai way of life.
Any resources and income must go on basic survival, so girls lose their education and support networks. My colleagues at the University of Portsmouth have linked climate crises to increases in FGM and child marriage in the Kenyan towns of Garissa and Isiolo. Economic hardship can strengthen incentives for child marriage, particularly where bride wealth traditions exist.
A risk multiplier
Climate change does not cause FGM directly. Rather, it interacts with existing gender inequalities, poverty, cultural norms and marriage practices. Climate change acts as a risk multiplier, making it harder for communities and governments to sustain progress toward ending FGM.
As soon as hardship hits, the values and beliefs that push the need for FGM return.
Ending FGM cannot be separated from climate resilience. Laws, education and community activism are important, but they are harder to sustain when families are hungry, displaced or cut off from support. If anti-FGM work is treated as separate from food security, education, social protection and climate adaptation, the girls most at risk will be left carrying the cost of crises they did nothing to create.
