by Maryruth Belsey Priebe
As climate disasters intensify, defense and security institutions are increasingly called upon to provide humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR). One only needs to scan the news to see the role these institutions have been playing: the German military during a July 2021 flood in Europe; NATO following a devastating 2023 earthquake in Türkiye; United States (US) Marines in the Philippines after Typhoon Krathon in October 2024, working at one point alongside the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit and Marine Rotational Force–Southeast Asia to distribute materials such as tarps, shelter kits, and food packets. These institutions possess unique capabilities, including rapid mobilization of personnel and resources, logistics expertise, and specialized equipment crucial for immediate disaster response. Their established command structures and ability to operate in challenging conditions make them invaluable first responders when civilian infrastructure is overwhelmed.
The expertise of these institutions in HA/DR, however, does not ensure an operationalization of a gender perspective in crisis settings—an important consideration, given that the impacts of climate disasters are not felt evenly by all populations. Women in particular face disproportionate risks in disasters like catastrophic typhoons and prolonged droughts, as entrenched gender inequalities shape both their individual vulnerabilities and broader security threats. However, conventional approaches to disaster response have often failed to account for these complex dynamics, leading to gaps in aid delivery and unintended consequences for affected communities.
Women’s civil society organizations (CSOs), with their deep community roots and understanding of gender dynamics, are key to addressing these gaps. Yet, many women’s CSOs are cautious in partnering with defense institutions due to historical tensions rooted in anti-militarization movements and the need to preserve their feminist principles and community trust. As climate change accelerates instability worldwide, building thoughtful, regenerative partnerships that respect these tensions while advancing shared humanitarian goals is becoming increasingly urgent.
The Critical Link Between Human Security and National Security
When individuals, particularly vulnerable populations, face persistent threats, challenges to their safety, health, and wellbeing can accumulate and destabilize entire communities. This erosion of human security creates conditions that have the potential to threaten national stability through increased social tensions, economic disruption, and political instability. Women’s CSOs are uniquely positioned to understand and communicate how individual human insecurities can quickly spiral into national-level instability if not addressed proactively. Their deep engagement with local communities provides a grassroots understanding of the cascading impacts of disasters when response efforts fail to account for gender dynamics.
Imagine a community where flooding has disrupted local water systems. Women and girls, who often bear primary responsibility for household water collection, must now travel further and spend more time securing this basic necessity. This increased burden not only pulls them away from economic activities and schooling but also exposes them to greater risks of gender-based violence.
As women’s individual security is eroded, the effects ripple outward, exacerbating existing inequalities—and sometimes resulting in new tensions and security risks. Strained household finances can fuel domestic tensions. Heightened competition over scarce resources may spark conflicts between neighbors and communities. The trauma and instability experienced by women can filter through their roles as caregivers and social connectors, impacting the resilience of families and social fabrics.
Making Disaster Response More Effective Through Civil-Military Partnership
Civil society organizations (CSOs), with their understanding of on-the-ground realities, are well placed to communicate to national authorities how localized human insecurities, if left unaddressed, can destabilize the broader social and political landscape over time. These organizations can point to concrete evidence from their communities, showing how gender-blind disaster response directly undermines national stability.
For instance, in the water crisis scenario, a gender-blind response might focus solely on technical solutions such as repairing infrastructure, while ignoring the immediate safety risks women face during water collection. Without designated safe routes, security patrols, or community-based protection systems, women may face increased sexual violence or harassment. The resulting trauma and fear can lead to women avoiding water collection altogether, causing health crises within households and communities. As families struggle with basic needs, girls might be pulled from school to help with water collection, creating long-term impacts on education and economic opportunities. These cascading effects can trigger broader social instability through increased household poverty, community health crises, and deepening gender inequalities—all of which strain government resources and social cohesion.
It is critical for security actors to grasp the human security-national security connection as they increasingly engage in disaster risk reduction and HA/DR activities. In a world of complex, interconnected threats, traditional notions of national security are insufficient. Adopting a human security lens—which recognizes that the safety and wellbeing of individuals, particularly those most marginalized, is fundamental to the stability of nations—is imperative.
When security institutions understand this link, they have the potential to become vital partners in building resilience from the ground up. But it’s important that such partnerships are formed with sensitivity to the needs and concerns of the communities they purport to benefit. The challenge, as critics rightly argue, is that framing climate change primarily as a security threat risks militarizing the climate crisis, leading to the direction of resources toward military solutions rather than addressing root causes and community needs. Consider that the US military is “one of the largest climate polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more CO2e (carbon-dioxide equivalent) than most countries.” Furthermore, as a Transnational Institute report (2022) found, funds spent on defense and security not only increases greenhouse gas emissions, but also “diverts financial resources, skills and attention away from tackling one of the greatest existential threats humanity has ever experienced.”
As such, meaningful partnerships require defense and security institutions to commit to both reducing their environmental impact and ensuring their disaster response work actively supports rather than undermines local climate resilience efforts, with CSOs playing a vital accountability role in helping shape more sustainable security practices. By channeling resources and capacity to address the human security needs identified by women’s CSOs, they can shore up the foundations of national stability. This might involve ensuring equitable access to early warning systems, preventing gender-based violence in disaster shelters, supporting women’s asset recovery, or facilitating women’s participation in decision-making.
Ultimately, by elevating and investing in women’s grassroots leadership, societies can weave a tighter social fabric to weather the stresses of climate change. When women are secure, empowered, and fully engaged as stakeholders, entire communities are better equipped to withstand shocks, manage tensions, and rebuild sustainably. Those stronger communities, in turn, form the bedrock of more peaceful, stable nations.
The Value of CSOs in Three Critical Areas
The expertise of women’s CSOs is particularly valuable in three critical areas: understanding community vulnerabilities and strengths; designing inclusive response mechanisms; and building long-term resilience.
Participatory approaches to disaster risk reduction planning that meaningfully includes women’s CSOs is essential for understanding local vulnerabilities and can inform everything from early warning communications to food aid distribution to post-disaster recovery programs. Japan’s shelter management approach exemplifies successful civil-military collaboration. A partnership between women’s organizations, defense and security institutions, and academia produced a comprehensive Evacuation Shelter Management Checklist which addresses women’s often-overlooked needs—from ensuring private spaces for nursing mothers to equitably distributing unpaid care responsibilities in evacuation centers.
Women-focused CSO’s community networks built on relationships of trust are also invaluable for implementing inclusive response efforts effectively on the ground. Recent experiences from the Philippines demonstrate how women’s organizations can help develop inclusive responses by effectively bridging the gap between security forces and local communities. During typhoon responses, women‘s CSOs have facilitated crucial information exchanges, ensuring that defense and security assistance reaches the most vulnerable populations while respecting local customs and gender dynamics. This kind of civilian-military collaboration has proven essential for building community trust with security actors and improving the effectiveness of disaster relief efforts.
The value of civil-military partnerships extends beyond immediate disaster response to long-term resilience as well. Women’s CSOs often possess deep knowledge of traditional ecological practices and community-based adaptation strategies that are essential for community sustainability. This expertise can enhance defense and security planning for long-term climate resilience. Furthermore, CSOs can help identify and prevent the escalation of potential security risks, such as resource conflicts or displacement-related tensions.
Steps to Prioritize for Engagement
Defense and security institutions must prioritize three key areas for effective engagement with women’s CSOs: relationship-building, mutual skill development, and co-creation and regeneration.
First, trust-building is crucial. Security institutions should understand the historical context and invest time in establishing genuine relationships with local civil society organizations. Identifying appropriate CSO partners requires careful evaluation and relationship building, particularly given the historically adversarial relationship between feminist organizations and defense institutions. Many women’s CSOs emerged from anti-militarization and disarmament movements that form the foundation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda. Security institutions should invest time in understanding local civil society and build trust with potential partners. This process requires acknowledging past harms while demonstrating genuine commitment to new ways of working together. This also necessitates significant time and cultural change within security institutions to move beyond their traditional reliance on masculinized and securitized priorities that can impede effective humanitarian response.
Second, through mutual learning exchanges, joint preparedness and coordination frameworks need to be established to bridge communication gaps. While women’s organizations bring vital expertise in gender-responsive disaster preparedness and community mobilization, they may need guidance on how to effectively navigate military command structures, communicate operational requirements, and lead joint planning sessions with defense institutions. Conversely, while defense institutions excel at logistics and rapid response, they need to learn from CSOs about community-centered approaches and gender-sensitive operations. Creating shared vocabulary, protocols, and understanding around disaster response can strengthen collaboration. This might include simulation exercises, developing common assessment tools for gender-responsive needs evaluation, or establishing clear communication channels and decision-making processes for emergency situations.
Finally, partnerships should be structured around feminist principles of co-creation and regeneration. This means rejecting extractive practices where security institutions exploit CSOs for local knowledge without offering long-term support. Instead, defense and security institutions must commit to providing sustainable support that strengthens women’s CSOs during and beyond crises. This means providing adequate, flexible funding for disaster preparedness and response activities; respecting organizational autonomy in implementation; and viewing women’s organizations as equal partners whose institutional resilience is as important as the knowledge they share. By investing in CSOs’ operational capacity and recognizing their strategic value, defense and security institutions can help build lasting disaster response partnerships that enhance both military and civilian capabilities while strengthening community resilience.
Looking Ahead: Transformative Potential
As climate threats escalate, the urgency of fostering genuine civil-military partnerships becomes clear. The success of such partnerships, rooted in mutual accountability and feminist principles, has the potential to reshape disaster response, empowering communities to build sustainable resilience and, ultimately, contributing to national stability.
A recent meeting in Oslo on November 28, 2024 hosted by Norway’s Minister of Justice and Public Security, Emilie Enger Mehl, and attended by other Nordic leaders, highlighted the growing recognition among security principals that societal resilience hinges on strong partnerships between the military and civilian sectors. The ministers focused on developing strategies for joint planning and exercises that would enhance protection for civilian populations while supporting defense and security efforts.
However, these initiatives must go beyond traditional security frameworks and adopt feminist approaches to disaster response. This requires more than operational coordination; it necessitates fundamental shifts in how defense and security institutions engage with women’s organizations and how they conceptualize security itself.
Such partnerships can drive broader institutional change within military organizations while reinforcing community resilience. Yet realizing their full potential will require defense and security institutions to critically examine and transform their masculinized security approaches. They must provide sustained, flexible support that allows women’s CSOs to lead in disaster planning and response—addressing both immediate operational needs and longer-term goals of shifting power dynamics and institutional cultures.
As climate threats mount, the increasing costs of maintaining traditional, hierarchical approaches to disaster response become even more apparent. The challenge now is to move beyond superficial collaboration to create genuine, sustained partnerships that transform both disaster response and the very concept of security. While this transformation requires significant institutional change, particularly within military organizations, it offers the best path toward effective and equitable climate resilience.
Maryruth Belsey Priebe is the Co-Founder & COO of aXXelerate.