The Gambia: Women Farming in Kubandar: Land Disputes, Climate Crisis, and Inequality

Mar 24, 2022 | UNFPA
UNFPA
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In a world where climate change is impacting everyone everywhere either directly or indirectly, the poor and vulnerable are left to carry a great burden of its effects due to their lack of adequate resources to adapt. In The Gambia, these groups are mainly comprised of women and young people due to socio-culturally fueled power imbalances, their limited access to ownership and control of resources and their exclusion from participation in decision making processes. Consultations held by The Gambia Red Cross Society and the World Food Programme in the North bank Region have indicated weak community-level dispute resolution platforms and monitors which were further found to exclude women and young people. The lack of inclusion of this demography can be attributed to socio-cultural norms which augment gender and age inequalities and gender-based injustices.

Today, women constitute over 70% of the agricultural workforce in The Gambia mainly through their participation in subsistence farming, which aids in the nurturing and upkeep of their families and their participation in social life. Mariama Sanyang is a woman farmer and native of Kubandar. She is part of a group of 30 women farmers who benefitted from the Regional Farmer Field School Training for women from the North Bank, Central River and Upper River Regions of The Gambia. Supported by UNFPA with funding from UN Peacebuilding, the training was aimed at mitigating the effects of gender-related vulnerabilities resulting from the impact of climate change in farming communities.

Her community, Kubandar, a small settlement in the North Bank Region of The Gambia has been the subject of land ownership disputes with its neighbouring villages such as Makka Farafenni for decades. Unfortunately, women farmers have been on the receiving end of the negative impact of these disputes as they are forced to evade their farmlands and seize farming activities to support the amicable resolution of such inter and intra-community land disputes.