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… Implement Laws,Government Policies on Women Rights ~ Emem Okon
By Paul Williams
Over 30 women from rural communities in Niger Delta are expected to attend the Conference of the Parties (COP 30) in Brazil in November to press home a demand for a global response to the call for climate action and justice in Nigeria’s oil-rich region.
This was one of the outcomes of the 3rd Annual Niger Delta Climate Change Conference, with the theme: ‘Building A Resilient Future, Integrated Climate Action and Community Empowerment in the Niger Delta,’ held in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, from July 7 – 11, 2025.
Executive Director of Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Centre, Dr. Emem Okon, said the women, from the creeks, coastal and upland communities in Rivers, Bayelsa, Delta, Akwa Ibom, Cross River and Edo, will be representing millions of Niger Delta women “who cannot be in Brazil to lend their voices.”
Their demands are for an urgent remediation of the Niger Delta environment battered by over 70 years of oil exploration activities by oil multinational, such as Shell.
Dr. Okon, whose organisation is the lead body advocating for the rights of Niger Delta women, said the campaign for remediation of the Niger Delta environment, devastated by the 70 years of oil exploration, entwines with the urgent call for the protection of women’s rights in the region.
The executive director of Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Centre, who was speaking during the Women & Climate Change session of the conference, linked the denial of women’s rights to the exploding poverty in the region, while calling for their inclusion in decision-making at the family and community levels.
Dr Okon said, “In the Niger Delta, over the past decades, women have been in conflict due to oil resource extraction, despite the significant roles that they play in the family and in the community.
“And because of the relationship that women have with the environment, they still have to go to the polluted environment. to gather seafood, gather firewood, and still use polluted water for farming. For women farmers, the harvest is no longer possible. Some of their crops have been found to contain food with oil deposits in them. Women struggle to make ends meet despite the fact that they are environmental stewards.”
She pointed out that, “When we say women’s rights, it’s not something different from human rights, because women’s rights are human rights. But why it appears as if women’s rights are different is because women often suffer violations of their human rights.
“This is because their human rights have not always been a priority. Therefore, achieving recognition of women’s rights requires deeper understanding of the situation in which they experience exclusion and discrimination,”
Dr Okon said that by recognizing women’s rights, the society would actually be fulfilling the value that they place on women, arguing that this is important given that women are at the center of socio-economic development.
She said there are many frameworks at different levels, national, African and international, that empowers women, recognizes women’s rights and provides for the protection of women’s rights, and asked governments at all levels to either implement or domesticate such laws and agreements where necessary.
“Some of them are the National Gender Policy, which was last reviewed in 2021. The National Action Plan on Gender and Climate Change in Nigeria, which was adopted in 2021. The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1967. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1979. The Beijing Declaration and the Beijing Practical for Action, which was adopted in 1995. The Optional Protocol of Women’s Rights to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, which was adopted in 2003 in Maputo, Mozambique.”
Dr. Okon noted that some of the issues surrounding women’s right in the Niger Delta include “unequal power relations between women and men, that excludes women from decision-making processes, harmful traditional practices against women, such as maltreatment of widows, lack of access to land, lack of access to safe-drinking water, sexual violence and other forms of gender-based violence, poor access to credit facilities.
“All these challenges, among others, lead in a non-formal way to the disproportionate impacts of climate change,” she said.
She further explained that “ecology is a women’s rights issue. Why? Because there is that relationship between women and nature. We always refer to nature as Mother Earth. And the same way the society exploits women. Is the same way the society exploits nature.”
Executive Director, Center for Gender Equity and Sustainable Development, Chief Constance Meju, said women are the main burden bearers of climate change.
In a presentation on ‘Conflict, Climate Change and the Niger Delta Women,’ Meju said Niger Delta women are under enormous stress.
“Because their land is no longer producing. Every day is flood. And herdsmen are not allowing them to farm in the small space that is left. When they are allowed to farm, what comes out of it at the end becomes harvest for thieves.
“So it’s a very difficult time for women, and they are asking that the Federal Government should declare a state of emergency on agriculture and security. Because you cannot carry out agriculture under an insecure atmosphere. And agriculture is the easiest means of coming out of poverty,” she said.
Chief Meju frowned at the fact that the women in the Niger Delta are from the richest and most endowed area in the world, but are the poorest because of all these circumstances.
“We are saying that we need an audit of the health status of Niger Delta and especially women and children. We also need specialized hospitals to take care of all this.
“We need water. We need special interventions in the area of education, health, empowerment, skill acquisition for women, digital skill for girls and also we want our voices to be heard in leadership positions at the community, state, local and national levels.
“But beyond that, the government already has two policies that will drive whatever we are demanding and those two policies are the Nigerian National Gender Policy and the action plan, the Gender Action Plan against Climate Change. Let these two policies be domesticated at the state and the local government levels,” she said.
Executive Director of Lekeh Development Foundation (LEDEF), Friday Nbani Barilule, whose group organised the Niger Delta Conference, said the campaign for climate action and justice in the Niger Delta is “from step to step, we will see our vision through, to end the devastation and promote a comfortable and a beautiful environment.”
He said his organisation “work with people at the grassroots and communities, and we identify that a lot of our own people are in pains. There is hunger in the land, conflicts and serial pollution. Even the soil is in crisis, human beings are in crisis and the ecosystem is in crisis and we don’t have a platform where we can share what is worrying us.”
This desire for a platform for Niger Delta people to ventilate their pains over the environment gave birth to the Niger Delta conference on climate change, Nbani said.
He described the conference as a conversation around climate change and a movement for environmental justice, which will be sustained until climate action, remediation and resilience are achieved in the Niger Delta.
A participant at the conference, Pastor Michael Zilly Aggrey, who is Director of Projects and Operations, Zadok Foundation, and youth pastor at the Royal House of Grace Church, said the environmental impact of oil extraction activities on the Niger Delta is glaring for all to see.
“I’m here today because I’m from the Niger Delta. Now, we’re talking about flooding here and there, and the Niger Delta Climate Change Conference has given us opportunity to discuss these issues.”
Zilly Aggrey said one way of ending poverty in the region is by achieving food security. This can be done, he said, if governments at all levels and faith-based organisations join hands with civil society groups in working for an end to hunger.
“Kebetkache has been able to give me exposure, to give me trainings, to have a better understanding of the issues we are facing in the Niger Delta. One of these areas is the agroecology and the food insecurity that we face globally, not just in Nigeria.
“I felt that we, as a religious or a faith-based organization, we need to lend our voice to the cause by getting involved, not just in advocacy, but in action. So we started the Zadok Farm to be able to create awareness for faith-based organizations to get involved in agriculture,” he said.
