Every year, more than twenty million people – an average of one person every second – are displaced because of climate-related disasters, such as floods, droughts, rising sea levels, and storms. They are forced to leave their homes and migrate elsewhere, either temporarily or permanently, to escape the ravages of an ever-more-extreme climate, but with risks to their lives in the process of migration.
While everyone is affected by the changes in the climate, these changes do not affect everyone equally. Climate-related displacement disproportionally affects women and girls, because it exacerbates already existing inequalities in society and, in so doing, renders them even more vulnerable to trafficking, violence, and sexual exploitation than usual. As a result, many of them are forced into sex work as the only way to feed themselves and their children.
This film explores climate-related displacement and sheds light on the suffering inflicted on women and girls in this context. The filmmakers not only travel to Bangladesh to tell the story of Pakhi, 18, who migrated to the capital after her family's house was washed away by the floods and was pushed into prostitution before she had even turned 15 years old, but they also interview experts in London, Geneva, Stockholm and Dhaka to put her story in a wider context and better understand the scale of the issue.