As conflict and the climate emergency converge, we must put women, children, and adolescents at the heart of integrated action

AI Summary

The article argues that armed conflict, displacement, disease outbreaks, and climate-related disasters increasingly overlap, undermining already fragile health and humanitarian systems. It calls for integrated responses that prioritize women, children, and adolescents, warning that future epidemics could emerge in conflict-affected regions with weak surveillance and disrupted services.

Over the past decade, a quiet catastrophe has taken hold. Armed conflict, forced displacement, disease outbreaks, and climate driven disasters are no longer sequential. They are converging and compounding. An estimated 3.6 billion people already live in areas highly susceptible to climate shocks.1 But when a heatwave, flood, or drought hits a community already fractured by war and humanitarian crisis, the result is not just a natural disaster but a systemic collapse. Drawing on lessons from Ebola and covid-19, epidemiologists warn that the next global health epidemic is likely to originate in a conflict zone where surveillance is broken, facilities are overburdened, basic services are disrupted, and health systems are already struggling.23Disease does not respect borders or frontlines. Climate sensitive contexts and humanitarian settings are often the same places, acting as a threat multiplier with critical impact on vulnerable women, children, and adolescents. For example, in the West African Sahel...