Climate Change and Gender-based Violence in Colombia: Peacebuilding, Feminism and the Special Jurisdiction for Peace
Publisher: Handbook on Gender and Security
Author(s): Natalia Urzola and María Paula González Espinel
Date: 2025
Topics: Climate Change, Gender, Peace and Security Operations
Countries: Colombia
Climate change's devastating effects exacerbate pre-existing conditions of vulnerability, including gender-based violence. For historically marginalized groups in Colombia (i.e., Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, peasants, women, LGBTQIA+, children, etc.), the climate crisis is coupled with the challenges of building peace in a conflict-ridden territory. The Colombian armed conflict is deeply rooted in structural, intersecting causes that relate to a multiplicity of factors, including environmental and socio-economic. Yet, these causes tend to be analyzed independently from each other. This chapter looks at the work of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP) regarding armed conflict-derived gender-based violence and examines how the SJP grapples with, or fails to address, the climate dimensions of gender-based violence. The chapter then asks whether an intersectional analysis of how climate change and other categorical axes acting as interlocking forms of oppression could provide new perspectives that recognize the situatedness of historically marginalized groups within the larger social context and suggests avenues for future research.