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In Sri Lanka, climate change traps women farmers in ‘exploitative’ cycle of economic violence
- Unpredictable weather patterns have left women farmers trapped in debt as floods, droughts batter their farms, straining their ability to repay loans
- Low financial literacy among rural women is exploited by the these microlenders and their predatory practices, putting them in more debt
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This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.
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Shiroma Sandamali, 36, used to run when she knew debt collectors were coming. Then she would hide, sometimes inside a house, sometimes in a woody patch of her village.
“Even when I was heavy with my daughter, I used to hide for so many hours. She was born underweight. After the child was born, I could not even peacefully breastfeed her. I was busy avoiding loan collectors or somehow trying to find the money [to pay them back],” she told This Week in Asia.
Sandamali is a farmer from Chandana Pokuna in the North Central Province, Sri Lanka’s agricultural nerve centre with sprawling paddy fields, farms and an extensive network of reservoirs and irrigation canals.
She is among tens of thousands of women who have used exploitative microfinance loans from large finance companies, which show up in villages with the promise of fast cash with no collateral. But unpredictable weather patterns have left them trapped in debt as floods and droughts batter their paddy farms, straining their ability to repay the loan instalments that in most cases are charged on a weekly basis with steep interest rates.
Loan collectors would resort to aggressive tactics, including refusing to leave the women’s homes until the instalments were paid.
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