Articles about Humanitarian

Across South Asia, from India, to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, climate change has devastated communities with intense cyclones, floods, and heat waves. According to a World Bank Report, “South Asia is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate shocks. The region is living through a “new climate normal” in which intensifying heat waves, cyclones, droughts, and floods are testing the limits of government, businesses, and citizens to adapt. More than half of all South Asians, or 750 million people in the eight countries — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka — were affected by one or more climate-related disasters in the last two decades.  The changing climate could sharply diminish living conditions for up to 800 million people in a region that already has some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations.” According to an article by Reuters, sex workers in Bangladesh will face increasing struggles as climate change causes more unpredictable weather. “Social prejudice and stigma in Bangladesh combine to exclude trans and intersex people, said Mahfuza Mala, a climate expert and gender justice activist who works for Naripokkho, a feminist working for the advancement of women’s rights in Bangladesh. As a result, these groups are especially vulnerable to shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic and extreme weather fuelled by climate change, including the devastating floods that have hit the northeast this month.” In Sri Lanka, transgender people face employment struggles even without the additional challenge of climate change according to the paper, Gender Identity Matters: Barriers to Employment Cycle of Transgender Individuals in the Labor Market of Sri Lanka. According to the Centre of Science and Environment, an environmental and science organisation based in Delhi, “In 2024, India faced extreme weather events on 93 per cent of the days in the year’s first nine months -- 255 out of 274 days -- marked by heat and cold waves, cyclones, lightning, heavy rain, floods and landslides.” The Centre of Science and Environment, a Delhi-based environmental and science think-tank, reports that during the first nine months of 2024, India faced extreme weather events — heatwaves, cyclones, floods, and landslides — on 255 out of 274 days.   “The extreme weather events that pan-India is experiencing impacts the most vulnerable the hardest, including both cis and trans sex workers,” explains Dr. L. Ramakrishnan, the Vice President of the Chennai-based non-profit organization Solidarity and Action Against the HIV Infection in India (SAATHII). “We saw this very clearly during the 2015 floods in Chennai. Working class transfeminine persons, many of whom engage in sex work, live along the banks of the city’s rivers and canals, and when extreme rains caused the riverbanks to overflow, their homes were destroyed. They were left high — and not quite dry,” he adds. Panna Guru, as she is commonly known in the city of Pune, Maharashtra, has been advocating for the rights for the trans sex worker community for 40 years. As a Guru, i.e., someone who has earned their right to lead a household, she lives with 20 other chelas or her trans women followers. “The rains in Pune start in May now! I got soaked just the other day, who will take care of us when we get sick? If we don’t work, we don’t eat. We don’t own property, and we don’t have wealth. We do everything ourselves. When our homes are flooded, we get lots of pests because we live in the slum area — in the red-light district — so even putting our feet on the floor means we get bitten. When it’s hot outside, the men seem to be in a hurry, they don’t talk to us or ask about us; they come in bad moods, and since we don’t have air-conditioning, it can get very hot, so our clients get angry. They hit us sometimes; they scream at us". 

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