Defending the Future: gender, conflict and environmental peace

Contributor(s): Hannah Bond, Bineta Diop, Helen Kezie-Nwoha | There is a growing recognition of the need for the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda to take into account how the climate crisis poses risks to women and girls’ peace and security, particularly in conflict and post-conflict contexts. Food security, water insecurity and displacement are issues affecting women and girls due to extreme weather and the climate emergency. The intersection of WPS, climate change, ecological destruction and conflict or post-conflict situations thus raises a myriad of issues. This discussion project addresses these issues and launches a report written in partnership between LSE's Centre for Women, Peace and Security, the Women’s International Peace Centre and Gender Action for Peace and Security. 

Meet our speakers and chair

Hannah Bond (@h_rbond) is Director of Gender Action for Peace and Security (GAPS). Hannah has worked with CSOs and government in the UK and Global South. In the early stages of her career, Hannah worked for the UK Women’s National Commission, focusing on violence against women. She has since worked for humanitarian and development NGOs in the Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa and for the British Embassy in Addis Ababa where she worked on Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somaliland. Hannah lived and worked for six years in Ethiopia, where she specialised in conflict, gender, human rights, community-based development and economic empowerment. Hannah focused on conflict and gender in her Master’s degree at King’s College London.

Bineta Diop (@AUBinetaDiop) is currently the Special Envoy of the Chairperson of the African Union Commission on Women, Peace and Security. She is the founder and President of Femmes Africa Solidarité (FAS), an international NGO based in Geneva with its operation office in Dakar/Senegal. The organisation seeks to foster, strengthen and promote the leadership role of women in conflict prevention, management and resolution in Africa. Mme Diop played an instrumental role in the adoption of the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa as well as the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa. She has led peacebuilding programs as well as many women’s peace and security initiatives.

Helen Kezie-Nwoha (@keziehelen) is a feminist peace activist, women human rights defender and the Executive Director at The Women’s International Peace Centre. Helen has an academic background in gender and international development with over 20 years of experience working on women’s rights, gender, peace building, conflict resolution and governance. She has led peace advocacy efforts at international, regional and national levels specifically in Africa and Asia. Her research interests focus on women’s peace efforts and women’s participation in peace building and post conflict reconstruction; documenting women and girls’ refugee experiences; and gender and humanitarian response.

Keina Yoshida (@intlawninja) is a Research Officer in the Centre for Women, Peace, and Security, where she works on the AHRC funded project Feminist Approaches to the International Law of Peace and Security (FILPS) led by Professor Christine Chinkin and Dr Louise Arimatsu. Keina is researching the links between the environment, nature, sustainable development goals, the gendered causes and impacts of violence against women, and structural inequalities in the context of international legal conceptions of peace and security.

More about this event

The Centre for Women, Peace and Security (@LSE_WPS) is a leading academic space for scholars, practitioners, activists, policy-makers and students to develop strategies to promote justice, human rights and participation of women in conflict-affected situations around the world.

This event forms part of LSE’s Shaping the Post-COVID World initiative, a series of debates about the direction the world could and should be taking after the crisis.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSECOVID19