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Break Free!

At the Crossroads of Climate Change, SRHR, Gender, and Education: Finding Pathways to Resilience

Authors
Pam Baatsen, Hannah Kabelka, Anne Karan
Publication year
Augustus 2025

This review highlights the urgent need to address the intersecting impacts of climate change on adolescents and young people in Southern Africa—particularly in relation to SRHR, gender equality, and education. Climate change exacerbates existing structural inequalities, disproportionately affecting marginalised groups such as girls, LGBTQI+ youth, young people with disabilities, and those living in poverty or displacement. These groups face cascading harms: school closures, increased gender-based violence, disrupted SRHR services, and harmful coping strategies such as child marriage or transactional sex. These disruptions are interconnected and cyclical, reinforcing poverty, reducing access to education and health services, and deepening gendered vulnerabilities.

Related project

  • Break Free! – Young people advocate for their sexual and reproductive health and rights

    • Institute
    • Project

    About the Programme Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) are critical to the healthy development of young people. Yet across many African countries, young people face inaccurate information, limited access to health services, and restrictive gender norms. For girls in particular, child marriage, teenage pregnancy, and female genital mutilation/cutting continue to shape their health, […]