“Livestock and rice fields of villagers were damaged,” recalled Kanha, “but the drowning death of a 7 year-old girl was heart-breaking for me.” The girl’s death brought grief to the community in Kampot, the southern Cambodia city where Kanha is Deputy District Governor. When a disaster hits, boys and girls, and men and women have distinct vulnerabilities, and this shapes the way the experience and recover from a disaster. One such vulnerability is gender inequality.

Every morning at 10 a.m., Sok Sopheap sets off to run errands and pick up her two grandchildren from school in Tropang Thom village, southern Cambodia. Sopheap is in her 50’s – a stage in life when many women in her country might slow down – but like many local women, she is bearing an increasingly heavy burden as a result of climate change. Like other villages in Takeo province, Tropang Thom has been in the grip of an oscillating water crisis.

A project to strengthen women’s resilience to climate change and natural disasters in Cambodia has begun with government, civil society and women’s groups, and United Nations agencies discussing the best ways forward. The Cambodia project is part of a larger project that UN women is jointly coordinating with UN Environment in Asia-Pacific countries. The Government of Sweden funds the project, which runs from 2018 to 2022 and is called The Empower: Empowering Women to Secure Climate-resilient Societies...

Local administrations in Cambodia are planning to incorporate into their climate change risk reduction plans the ideas contributed by female leaders who received training under a United Nations project. Local authorities discussed the plans with women’s and civil society groups on 17 and 19 October in two provinces, Prey Veng and Kompot...

The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has signed a Letter of Agreement (LoA) with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) through support from United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to strengthen responses with focus on women and issues faced by them during and post disasters. Pakistan has been home to complex emergencies and disasters, which have devastating consequences, including widening of the ‘gender’ gaps between...