How Pangani villagers push for gender and climate justice

Globally, women and children remain the biggest sufferers when it comes to climate change. The numbers double and triple in second and third world countries, especially in communities where women are both the bread winners and nurturers of their families.

These challenges are exacerbated in situations where women lose their spouses and are left to fend for themselves and their families after losing their property.

Such is the story of Shemsa Juma*, a resident of Pangani district in Tanga region. After being married for over ten years, Shemsa lost her husband to sickness in 2010 and was almost unfortunate enough to suffer cruelty at the hands of her in-laws.

“I am a mother and a widow. After the death of my husband, his family wanted to confiscate all the property that I owned with him, and only give me a little,” she narrates.

Among the properties she was at risk of losing was a farm she and her late husband had purchased that was the source of their sustenance.

Shemsa is not alone in the challenges she faces as a woman in societies that view a woman as a second class citizen.

Many women in this region face challenges that have been made even more difficult by climate change effects.

Long periods of drought means that their farms aren’t able to produce enough to sustain them and sparse, irrational rains makes it difficult to plan the farming periods for optimal harvests.

Unfortunately, these aren’t enough circumstances to guarantee that a woman stay home. The family demands that require a woman to walk long distances in search of water, food and wood further exposes them to danger such as rape and predatory animals.

Failure to provide or return home with these provisions means she is equally likely to suffer some form of domestic violence at the hands of her husband at home.

While we are all aware that men and women have different roles and responsibilities, for women in the Pangani district, access to resources is heavily impacting their ability to adapt to climate change.

This increases the rates of violence and abuse in homes that are already facing deficits of resources.

Having observed these challenges in the villages of Pangani district in Tanga, Uzima Kwa Sanaa (UZIKWASA), an organisation that advocates for zero gender based violence by providing trainings and facilitating opportunities for change; decided to provide training and education to Kwakibuyu and Stahabu villages in the Pangani district so as to help families cope with the changes, demands and impact that climate change is bringing about to help reduce save women in these unfortunate situations.

The organisation has extensive experience in gender equality and social change programs in the country since its establishment in 2004 in Pangani, which constitutes of 33 villages and has a population of around 60,000 people.

Since its establishment, the organisation has worked to strengthen voices in rural communities by engaging them to find their own solutions to development challenges through encouraging empowerment and developing capable and committed leadership structures.

Working on multiple levels to facilitate commitment among men, women, youth and their leadership to realise their role in protecting women from abuse; they developed a set of integrated interventions that focus on addressing gender inequalities as well as gender based violence.

These include communications and dialogue campaigns utilising theatre for development, videos, films and magazines and a community radio (Pangani FM).

From their work in the region, UZIKWASA has observed the way Pangani women and children are abused while their communities and out of fear, they choose to stay silent and do not report the incidents.

Violence against women and children

Ashura Ramadhani, a resident of Stahabu village, shares that women are deeply affected by the long distances they have to travel in search of food, water and wood.

“People come to our villages and cut down trees, even the infant ones, which forces us to travel longer distances, return home tired but still expected to deal with other stuff which affects us psychologically,” she says.

In addition, Ashura’s husband Kassim Jumanne, explains that traveling long distances is very dangerous especially in big forests where bad things are bound to happen.

“You find children going into these big forests, they meet fierce animals as well as men who rape girls and abuse women in front of other people as a sport,” he says.

Other challenges this community has had to contend with include early marriages and pregnancies that often spell the end of a young woman’s educational aspirations.

Speaking with Zainabu Abdallah, a villager at Stahabu, she shares that when their children fall pregnant, they choose to marry them off to ease their burden.

“You find out that your children are pregnant because of a rape ordeal they may have endured in their long distance travels in search of water and wood we are forced to marry them off,” she explains.

Facilitating change

Fortunately all this is slowly changing now after the society has been enlightened by the education and trainings on gender and climate justice.

According to a facilitator from the community level at Stahabu, Mr Martin Nekwa, this training has helped them to create awareness to eliminate and erase cases of sexual violence against children and women.

“As a facilitator, our work in the community involves the village government, the education committee and the experts in the village. We report every incident to the village government and push for relevant action to be taken. Before, many cases used to stay at home because people were afraid to take action,” said Martin.

The UZIKWASA organisation, usually appoints several facilitators from different villages and trains them to be able to mobilise the community in public meetings to make sure they talk and collaborate to end gender violence within their communities.

A farmer at Stahabu, Shabani Rajab who received the training at UZIKWASA, said that the training helps a large percentage of people to find solutions that help to reduce poverty, sexism and violence against women who are not able to defend themselves.

“These training is very important because now the majority are aware about treating our environment well to make sure our children and women are safe, and removing the distance they have to travel to fetch water and wood,” said Shabani.

Adding to that, Mariam Suleiman who is a mother of two girls, explains that at least the training can bring them relief in terms of avenues to share their issues.

“Most of us were scared to report these acts, but we are now able to express them and all responsible parties listen to us and take to courts those who have committed these acts. Our children are now safe but we are still fighting to bring more change,” she explained.

Like many other women, Shemsa was able to participate in these trainings and shares that as a mother, these trainings have shown her these could be turning points in her life.

“I realised these are the ways of the past, and today women have rights. I thank UZIKWASA for taking me from the dark and showing me the light. UZIKWASA gave me a way to see how to secure my rights. Now my home, businesses and properties have returned to me,” she shares.

Gender and climate justice

Speaking with the Director General of UZIKWASA, Novatus Urassa, at this year’s Women’s day from Stahabu, he explained that women and children are supposed to be taken care of and one way to do this is by planting trees and taking care of the environment.

“For women to fetch wood, they need to travel very far because of climate change effects. Fetching water is also an issue because drought forces them to travel long distances. When it comes to men, they all want to eat and take baths and they don’t care, so you find that mothers and children are the most affected people in this situation. These things go hand-in-hand with gender violence that is why we started creating awareness for the community to understand the importance of taking care of the environment so as to reduce the violence against women,” said Urassa.

Adding to that, Urassa said they provide regular four-day trainings where at the end, the villagers are encouraged to share their testimonies and key takeaways from their training so as to inspire others who haven’t received it yet.

“For the community to understand and to take action, that is big change. In cooperation with the district’s protection and security committees, we have tried to remove the obstacles that mothers face when they present their complaints at the police stations and court,” concludes Urassa.

Apart from the training session provided, they have also managed to build safe houses to protect and take care of those who have been subjected to brutal acts.

However it was amazing to witness how the Stahabu community shared their excitement and pride during their acting dialogue.

What makes it more interesting is the way the leaders are engaged in their acting and telling the stories which are lived and seen by most of the communities and being able to take actions.

They have managed to introduce a functioning and safe system for children to report sexual violence and abuse in all primary and some secondary schools in Pangani villages.

Considering gender and environment as inter-related things is crucial to saving our environment.

Hence, mainstreaming gender into the global environmental agenda is vital to strive for a better planet and save women and children for the violence.