Indigenous Women: Spaces and Scales of Environmental Insecurity and Conflict

The aim of this article is to expose different forms of insecurity of indigenous women stemming from environmental factors. Indigenous communities often reside in research-rich regions and depend on the environment for their health and well-being. Based on their ancestral roots, they have a unique connection to the land they live on, while also continuing to battle against pre-existing inequalities, the legacy of colonial times. On the other hand, there is a close relationship between extracting companies and state security forces providing those companies with protection against local communities opposed to continued extraction and associated environmental damage. Indeed, extracting activities have a frightening potential to aggravate insecurity, polarization and violence against women by ignoring indigenous narratives and sustaining repressive governments. At the same time, persistent patterns of gender-based violence against indigenous women by security forces, as well as increased levels of environmental degradation, accentuates domestic tensions exposing women to violence within their own communities. With climate change and its effects entering the stage, the risk of insecurity and conflict have further increased. International law and policy continue to rely heavily on traditional state-centric conceptions of security. This has led to a simplistic and rigid approach to women’s security which fails to account for different forms of insecurity and the intersections of gender with other factors such as ethnicity. Despite some, albeit limited, recognition of the need to address violence against women as a matter of international security, cardinal concepts of international law not only remain gender blind, but also fail to respond to indigenous concerns reflecting outdated colonial approaches to environmental security. This work highlights the urgent need for international security discourse to adapt to intersecting threats posed by environmental changes and their highly disproportionate impact on indigenous women.