From data to power: centring displaced women in climate and humanitarian decision-making

Climate-related disasters are becoming more frequent and severe, increasing displacement in fragile, conflict-affected areas. In refugee-hosting regions such as Dadaab and Hagadera in Garissa County, Kenya, extended periods of drought, unpredictable rainfall and flooding directly influence daily survival. Nevertheless, humanitarian interventions are impeded by inadequate data-collection systems and the ongoing marginalisation of the most severely impacted populations, especially displaced women and girls. The lack of gender-specific and intersectional data transcends technical issues, revealing fundamental structural inequalities in the processes of knowledge creation, validation and application. By referencing examples from Kenya, this article explores how refugee women-led organisations are innovating climate response strategies through co-design, participatory data systems and genuine engagement. These methodologies illustrate that incorporating lived experiences into data-collection and decision-making processes improves the targeting, efficiency and sustainability of humanitarian initiatives.

The gender–climate–displacement nexus

In places such as Kenya, climate change, displacement and gender inequality come together to create what some call a ‘triangle of vulnerability’. Events such as prolonged droughts or unpredictable rainfall patterns lead to displacement among populations, with the scale of displacement contingent upon prevailing inequalities. Many of those displaced reside in regions highly susceptible to climate variations, where infrastructure is inadequate, resources are scarce, and governance structures are weak. Women and girls in these regions encounter additional hardships, including limited access to land and financial resources, increased unpaid caregiving responsibilities, and heightened risks to personal safety. 

However, looking only at vulnerability misses an important part of the story. Displaced women play key roles in helping their communities stay strong and respond to crises. They act as first responders, managing immediate needs at home and in their communities; resource managers, making sure food, water and fuel are available during shortages; knowledge holders, using local experience to adapt; and community leaders, keeping people united and resolving conflicts. 

These roles are essential for survival and resilience. Yet humanitarian systems often overlook them, viewing refugee women primarily as passive recipients. This misunderstanding has serious consequences. It narrows who is consulted, leads to programmes that ignore local realities, and limits access to funding and leadership roles. As a result, efforts may fail to leverage existing strengths, causing inefficiencies and lost opportunities for lasting impact.

A systemic gap: data, power and exclusion

The main challenge is a systemic failure in how data is created, managed and used in humanitarian systems. Data is often treated as a neutral tool for decision-making. In reality, it reflects and reinforces power imbalances. While many humanitarian programmes collect basic gender-disaggregated data, they often lack more nuanced, intersectional data that captures how factors such as age, disability, legal status and displacement shape different experiences. Programmes then struggle to reach those most in need. More importantly, the issue is not only which data is collected but also who controls it. Usually, external actors set priorities, collect data without community involvement, and analyse it far from local realities. Those affected receive little feedback.

The emergence of ‘Kente Threads’

In Kenya’s climate context, the ‘Kente Threads’ project actively addresses systemic issues. It was co-designed by displaced women and feminist organisations. Inspired by traditional West African Kente cloth, this project reflects the idea that each thread signifies a specific story, identity, or history. It recognises that displaced women and girls experience a spectrum of diverse experiences rather than a singular narrative. It uses a method that synthesises various personal realities, acknowledging and respecting each ‘thread’, which is influenced by factors such as gender, displacement, disability, sexuality, age and social roles. Bringing together different personal realities of diverse refugee women-led groups, including women and girls living with disabilities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer/questioning (LGBTQI+) women and girls, to collectively generate data rooted in their lived experiences.

Through a participatory approach, these groups lead data collection within their communities, capturing realities often overlooked or excluded. They are then supported with training in data analysis, alongside tailored organisational capacity-strengthening, enabling them to interpret and own their data. This process positions them not just as participants, but also as leaders, using evidence they have shaped to drive advocacy and advance solutions for their communities. This opposes the uniform, one-size-fits-all practices common in current data systems and rejects models that treat refugee women-led organisations as passive participants without agency. The notion of ‘growing’ Kente threads illustrates how refugee women continually develop this knowledge.

Using Kente Threads for climate action

To deepen understanding, one can examine the Hagadera camp, where women-led groups informally document climate impacts through community dialogues and savings groups, such as Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs). These platforms serve dual roles as financial support mechanisms and vital forums for sharing experiences and collective reflection. During regular meetings, women discuss issues such as water scarcity, rising food prices, gender-based violence (GBV) and changing rainfall patterns. For instance, in VSLA discussions, women frequently emphasise that unpredictable and erratic rainy seasons have caused recurrent livestock losses and disrupted vulnerable livelihoods. They also monitor how droughts increase the need for longer trips to fetch water and firewood, raising protection concerns, while heavy rains cause flooding that damages shelter and pollutes water sources. These diverse experiences, shaped by gender, age, disability and displacement status, create unique ‘threads’ of data rarely captured by formal systems.

By collaboratively analysing this data, women identify new risks. Although these phenomena are deeply experienced at the household level, they are rarely documented within formal data-collection frameworks. Nevertheless, they offer immediate, context-specific insights into the ways climate change affects daily life in displacement scenarios.

Through collective analysis of these experiences, women not only identify emerging risks but also develop practical, locally driven responses. These responses include adjustments to livelihood strategies, reinforcement of informal safety nets and coordination of community-based resource-sharing mechanisms. In this manner, they demonstrate that displaced women are not merely passive data subjects but active producers of knowledge and decision-makers whose insights are vital to effective and inclusive climate and humanitarian initiatives. 

Women as owners of their data

‘Kente Threads’ redefines power in data by shifting control to displaced women as active participants. Unlike traditional systems that view communities as mere data sources, this approach involves women as co-designers, co-researchers and co-leaders who choose questions, lead data collection, interpret results and steer advocacy efforts. This method replaces extractive models by ensuring community members influence the process and decisions. Consent, accountability and feedback are integral at each stage, with data created collaboratively to empower communities to represent and shape their narratives.

A clear example of this approach is observed in the work of the Pastoralist Girls Initiative (PGI) in Hagadera. Collaborating with the International Rescue Committee, PGI trains women and girls as enumerators, thereby equipping them to oversee data collection within their communities. This strategy not only enhances data quality but also strengthens local capacity and promotes ownership of the process. Beyond data collection, women and girls actively conduct routine, women-led safety and security audits in both refugee and host communities. These audits evaluate various protection risks, including those exacerbated by climate change, such as water scarcity, increased vulnerability to violence during resource collection, and risks associated with displacement and environmental shocks. 

Crucially, the process does not end with data collection. Women and girls are supported in interpreting the findings and are provided with platforms to advocate for action. Through these platforms, they engage with humanitarian actors, service providers and community leadership on priority issues identified through the audits. This model not only enhances the relevance, accuracy and timeliness of data but also shifts power by ensuring that those most affected directly influence the decisions that shape their safety, resilience and future. This approach makes the initiative unique and powerful. By using Kente Threads to track climate impacts, the project gathers missing data on gender and social groups. It changes how knowledge is built and shared, as community members contribute their insights and link them to current systems.

Refugee women-led groups collect data through deeply rooted, community-led processes, in quiet, familiar spaces, under trees, in homes, in community centres, where women, girls and gender-diverse people reflect together on how climate change is shaping their lives, and speak in their own time. They gather stories through oral testimonies, intergenerational dialogues and collective mapping of environmental changes, drawing on lived experience as a form of evidence. They share stories of changing seasons, failed harvests, rising heat and displacement. Knowledge is gathered not as extraction, but as something held collectively, through storytelling, listening and reflection across generations. 

Local knowledge, local responses

Women map these changes with their own hands, tracing water sources that have disappeared, lands that no longer yield and the routes they now take to survive. Rather than relying only on formal interviews, they engage trusted community members, including religious leaders, community heads and women leaders, within ongoing relationships of accountability and care, ensuring that the knowledge produced is grounded, collective and owned by the community. In this way, data becomes something lived and felt, grounded in care, memory and everyday experience, and power begins to shift back into the hands of those who have both understanding and experience. They learn data analysis and practise advocacy. They use this knowledge to show what needs to change, and how. Their data shapes practical decisions about shelters, health services and resource use.

For example, women in Dadaab organised a fair water-distribution system, prioritising the most vulnerable households and coordinating access to reduce tension. What guided this system was not formal data, but grounded, community-held knowledge. Women drew on a deep understanding of household needs: who had more dependents, who was caring for children, older people, or people with disabilities, and who had the least access to alternative water sources. They mapped scarcity through daily observation, including which areas ran out fastest, where tensions were rising and which families were being left out. Conversations within the community – listening, cross-checking and building consensus – functioned as a form of collective data validation. Trust, proximity and accountability shaped decision-making, allowing them to prioritise the most vulnerable and coordinate distribution in ways that reduced conflict and ensured more equitable access.

There were no external frameworks guiding this, nor any data dashboards capturing it, and yet it worked. And here lies the problem. These experiences, these solutions, these insights often remain invisible in the systems that shape humanitarian response. Data is collected, but rarely by those living the reality. Priorities are defined externally. Analysis happens far away from the communities it represents. Displaced populations are grouped together, their differences flattened, their realities simplified.

Conclusion

Displaced women’s experiences, shaped by gender, displacement, disability, age and social roles, form the complete picture. Refugee women in Garissa don’t just face climate change; they respond to it, adapt and lead. Yet, decision-makers seldom include them. Climate justice demands fairness, access, inclusion and recognition, but limited funding, mobility, and training hinder progress. The project empowers women to lead discussions, gather data, analyse and advocate, turning data into a community resource. Refugee women face higher risks, yet their insights are missing from data and decisions. Kente Threads aims to change this by listening, recognising diverse experiences, and integrating them into community data for policy. Change is starting, valuing knowledge differently, and highlighting new voices, beginning with the women we serve. The world must see and follow their pattern.

Anila Noor is a Feminist Visionary leader, New Women Connectors.

Madina Yunis is Gender and Health Coordinator at Pastoralist Girls Initiative.