Beyond Hunger: The Rise of Gender Violence During Madagascar’s Prolonged Drought
The World Bank’s report reveals how the 2019–2022 drought in Southern Madagascar intensified gender-based violence, exacerbating existing inequalities and exposing women and girls to heightened risks. It underscores the urgent need for gender-responsive, community-driven, and climate-resilient interventions.

The World Bank’s 2025 report, “Women’s and Girls’ Exposure to Gender-Based Violence in Southern Madagascar: Their Insights and Experience in the Aftermath of the 2019–2022 Drought,” brings together powerful narratives from a region battling the double burden of climate crisis and entrenched gender inequality. Conducted with the collaboration of prominent institutions such as the Centre National de Recherche sur l’Environnement (CNRE), Médecins du Monde, ECPAT Madagascar, and Women Break the Silence, the study employed participatory qualitative research to understand how women and girls in the southern regions of Anosy, Androy, and Atsimo-Andrefana experienced gender-based violence (GBV) amid a devastating drought. With 244 people (78% of them women) engaged through focus group discussions and key informant interviews, this research spotlights voices too often left out of policy design and recovery strategies.
Drought, Distress, and the Surge of Gender-Based Violence
From 2019 to 2022, Southern Madagascar endured its worst drought in over four decades. Crop failures, food price inflation, and water scarcity shattered the backbone of rural livelihoods. But while food insecurity became the most visible crisis, women and girls bore an invisible but equally painful burden, an alarming spike in GBV. According to those interviewed, domestic violence intensified as household stress escalated. Many women reported that their partners, struggling with unemployment and frustration, turned violent, often while intoxicated. The lack of food and income often became the pretext for beatings, and in extreme cases, survivors were coerced into sex to obtain basic necessities like corn or soap.
Intimate partner violence emerged as the most common form of GBV, but participants also described a rise in child and forced marriages (CEFM), survival sex, and sexual abuse, including during humanitarian aid distributions. As male migration increased during the drought, women were left behind with no income, reduced social protection, and heightened vulnerability to exploitation. The presence of criminal gangs and the traditional cattle-raiding dahalo further endangered adolescent girls, who were often targeted for sexual assault.
Coping in Silence: Cultural Barriers to Seeking Help
Help-seeking behavior was marked by silence, shame, and stigma. In most communities, it was deemed dishonorable to report intimate partner violence to government authorities or the police. Women who attempted to seek help often faced community backlash, exclusion, or were simply ignored by undertrained, underfunded, or corrupt officials. While services like Trano Aro Zo and Centre Vonjy were intended to provide legal and psychosocial support, they were mostly accessed only in extreme cases, such as sexual assault resulting in severe injury.
Instead, women often turned first to their families or religious leaders, who in many cases advised endurance over action. Social norms in these regions consider complaints against a husband taboo (fady), and breaking the silence could mean losing familial ties or community standing. A female participant from Anosy remarked that even in cases of severe abuse, women often continued to suffer quietly, believing there was no real alternative. Mistrust in state systems, high costs of legal proceedings, distance from urban centers, and lack of awareness about existing services formed additional barriers.
Climate Crisis as a Catalyst for Gender Inequality
The report underscores that while GBV is rooted in power imbalances and harmful gender norms, the drought acted as a catalyst that accelerated its manifestations. Women and girls faced extreme time poverty, spending long hours fetching water or foraging for food, leaving them more exposed to violence in remote areas, such as fields or roads. The loss of agricultural income forced families to make desperate decisions. Girls were pulled out of school to help at home or were married off early as a financial strategy. A striking statistic referenced in the report reveals that early pregnancy rates for girls aged 15–17 were significantly higher in poor, rural households in the drought-affected south.
Children, especially girls, suffered acutely from the consequences of food insecurity and migration. Many were sent to cities to beg or work as domestic labor. Malnutrition, school dropout, and emotional trauma became common. Interestingly, the report also notes that girls living in female-headed households showed better school retention and were less likely to marry young, highlighting the protective value of maternal empowerment.
Community-Led Solutions and the Way Forward
Despite the grim realities, the study identifies sparks of resilience and grassroots innovation. Women’s cooperatives, village savings groups, and associations like Tokontanin’Ampela (Women’s Courts), supported by UNICEF, created spaces for peer support, leadership training, and financial empowerment. These groups enabled women to gain confidence, learn new skills, and form informal protection networks. Local initiatives like the dina, or community pacts, established with support from SOS Children’s Villages, introduced community-level rules prohibiting CEFM and promoting gender equality. Meanwhile, Men Engage Madagascar worked to reframe masculinity and engage boys and men as allies in the fight against GBV.
Still, these efforts face structural challenges: weak legal enforcement, limited geographical coverage, and fragmented coordination among NGOs and government actors. Many GBV survivors, particularly those with disabilities or from remote villages, remain out of reach. The report concludes with a call for multi-sectoral, gender-transformative responses that go beyond food security and infrastructure. Investments must be made not only in sustainable livelihoods but also in GBV services, legal reform, education, and long-term resilience.
The voices of women across Southern Madagascar carry a clear message: the climate crisis is not just about failed rains and dry fields, it is about fractured homes, broken social contracts, and threats to dignity and safety. Unless climate adaptation strategies actively integrate gender equity and GBV prevention, the cycle of poverty and violence will only deepen. This report is not just a warning; it is a roadmap for action rooted in the lived reality of those most affected.
- READ MORE ON:
- World Bank
- Madagascar
- gender-based violence
- GBV
- UNICEF
- FIRST PUBLISHED IN:
- Devdiscourse
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