It is 8 March 2022, and it is International Women’s Day. First commemorated by Uganda in 1984, IWD garners support for women’s rights and re-affirms the country’s commitments to ensuring that all women and girls within its borders lead dignified lives. Uganda’s commendable milestones in advancing women’s rights politically, socially, and economically include the Parish Development Model, which ring-fenced 30 per cent of resources towards women’s enterprises. But as we commemorate IWD 2022, it is important to recognise several dynamics that must be addressed to achieve the much-desired sustainable tomorrow.
It is 8 March 2022, and it is International Women’s Day. First commemorated by Uganda in 1984, IWD garners support for women’s rights and re-affirms the country’s commitments to ensuring that all women and girls within its borders lead dignified lives. Uganda’s commendable milestones in advancing women’s rights politically, socially, and economically include the Parish Development Model, which ring-fenced 30 per cent of resources towards women’s enterprises. But as we commemorate IWD 2022, it is important to recognise several dynamics that must be addressed to achieve the much-desired sustainable tomorrow.
The 2022 International Women’s Day theme, “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow,” comes at a time when the world is relentlessly struggling with existential threats. Planet earth is battling environmental and climate change-related threats. Due to global temperature rise and resultant floods, droughts, earthquakes, wildfires, and species loss, humanity is already experiencing disasters on a greater scale than previously thought possible. With women and girls at the epicentre of daily struggles for subsistence and fuelwood, they are heavily impacted by these dynamics.
At the same time, the world is recovering from COVID-19 induced lockdowns, during which the family as a core institution was tested to breaking point as households wrestled with associated physical, psychological, and economic stress. Early pregnancies created obstacles to returning to school and reduced the involvement of young women in debates about a sustainable tomorrow. Increasing tensions and clashes between refugees and their hosts over scarce natural resources have also heightened risks. Refugees and hosts alike depend on resources for fuelwood, shelter, agriculture, and income. The rising refugee numbers in Uganda have increased competition over land, water, wetlands, vegetation, and forest products, while aggravating cases of physical and sexual gender-based violence.
This year’s commemoration also coincides with a world struggling to pull back from the brink of a third world war, already confronted with a mass exodus of civilian women and girls on the one hand, and mass arming of untrained men and boys on the other. The theme aligns with the 66th Commission on the Status of Women, which is keen on achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental, and disaster risk reduction policies and programmes. Besides adopting the international theme, Uganda emphasises engaging men and boys in promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment in climate change, environmental, and disaster risk management.
Realising gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow requires that government stakeholders, civil society, the private sector, development and humanitarian actors, as well as the international community, wrestle with critical questions around land, livelihoods, male involvement, and legislative reforms. IWD 2022 should push us to revisit decades-old conversations on access to land and productive resources for women and girls, particularly given that the 30x30m plots of land offered to refugees in rural settlements cannot sustain food crop production, let alone support climate change mitigation. Settling refugees in marginal environments with few services, while reducing food distributions during a pandemic, has inevitably pushed refugee women with limited options to exploit nature for survival. Unless incomes are diversified or alternative sources of livelihood and fuelwood are made available, vulnerable refugee women will remain with no option besides clearing biomass, undermining sustainability.
This year’s theme also emphasises the importance of engaging men and boys in proactive climate change mitigation, adaptation, and responses, in addition to conventional roles such as ending violence against women and girls, HIV/AIDS prevention, sexual and reproductive health rights, unpaid care work, and child upbringing. Yet, it remains important to ask whether engaging men undermines the agency of women and girls, reinforces patriarchal powers, or reduces already meagre resources for women’s empowerment.
Uganda’s Constitution grants equal access to essential resources for all people, but in refugee hosting areas most land is customarily owned, with men as custodians. Women often access land only through husbands or sons. IWD 2022 reminds us to amplify advocacy, awareness, and engagements with cultural leaders to realise transformative change in women’s and girls’ enjoyment of their rights. Meanwhile, climate change is a matter of science, not politics, and Uganda’s pursuit of a middle-income economy recognises the importance of education, especially science and technology. We must ask whether women and girls are adequately equipped with the scientific knowledge needed to participate in environmental discourse.
Reports highlight that teenage pregnancies pose serious risks to sustainable development. UNICEF and UNFPA’s 2022 report “Teenage Pregnancy in Uganda: The Cost of Inaction” notes that 18% of annual births in Uganda result from teenage pregnancy. This trend could see 64% of teenage mothers unable to complete primary education. Uganda’s 2016 Demographic and Health Survey similarly revealed that one in four adolescent girls between 15 and 19 are already mothers or pregnant with their first child. Policies such as the Ministry of Education’s 2022 guidelines on mandatory pregnancy testing and maternity leave for schoolgirls risk reinforcing exclusion instead of addressing root causes.
Health remains another critical area. Refugee women are often excluded from livelihood programmes like ReHoPE and the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework, despite having endured profound physical, psychological, psychosocial, and political harms before, during, and after flight. These war-related injuries require timely and professional care if women and girls are to contribute meaningfully.
The Refugee Law Project (RLP), as a Centre for Justice and Forced Migrants, recognises the impact of climate change on women and girls irrespective of their legal status. With support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, RLP has embraced mitigation and adaptation strategies, including tree growing in Adjumani, Lamwo, and Kiryandongo districts. So far, 205 acres of land have been restored with trees of nutritional and climate value. RLP has promoted community dialogues, school debates, learning and exchange visits, training for stakeholders, and institutional nurseries raising over 400,000 seedlings.
For those heading to Yumbe District, where the national IWD 2022 event is held, let us be reminded that achieving gender equality for a sustainable tomorrow requires more than rhetoric. It requires continuous, rigorous action by communities, governments, civil society, private sector, donors, and the international community. We must expedite the National School Health Policy, engage communities in the 2020 pregnancy management guidelines, and fast-track the National Strategy on Ending Child Marriage and Teenage Pregnancies. We must also invest in women’s groups working on environmental protection, expand mental health and physical health support for survivors of sexual violence, promote refugee and host women’s participation in environmental planning, and translate laws and policy documents into refugee-friendly languages.
International Women’s Day 2022 calls on all of us to transition from proclamations to actionable commitments. From rhetorical proclamations to real action, our actions and inaction are equally loud. Happy International Women’s Day, 2022!
