The 66th Annual United Nations Commission on the Status of Women was a two-week gathering of UN delegates from all over the world. It was the first time that the urgency of the climate crisis and its unique intersections with gender were central to the proceedings.
The world is on fire, UN Women Executive director Sima Bahous stated in her opening remarks Monday. It affects every corner, and threatens peace in the Pacific and sustainable development from the Arctic. As with all crises climate change also has a high cost for women and girls. Not just for those already marginalized.
Every year, the commission meets at its New York City headquarters to discuss the global state of gender inequalities. This year, the theme is women’s rights in the context our planet is becoming more volatile.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a report last month that highlighted the impact of the climate crisis on the most vulnerable. It also included explicit gender references in its findings. The report included a section on the health effects climate change will have upon pregnant women, particularly those most vulnerable. It also called on a gender-inclusive response for climate change.
Seemin Qayum (UN Women’s policy advisor for sustainable development) said that it is high time to look at these issues together. Previous UN environmental summits have all incorporated gender to some extent, but we haven’t had, until now, a comprehensive treatment of all of these things together, Qayum said. That’s why I think that this is particularly significant and why this year’s priority theme has attracted so much attention.
Many women’s rights organizations feel the commission represents one of the last opportunities to influence global climate policy before it is too late. It advocates for solutions that promote gender equality and center women in frontline community communities.
The main purpose of the commission is to negotiate what’s known as agreed conclusions. These are the recommendations that member countries, including the United States say they’ll follow to combat gender inequality. These agreements, like many others that are drafted by the United Nations, are not binding but can be used as a tool for advocates on the ground. It becomes part of what we call the normative framework that the UN sets up, said Kathryn Tobin, senior program manager for WEDO, a global women’s advocacy organization. It is a strong anchor that civil society groups can use in order to hold their governments accountable.
WEDO and thousands from other NGOS/nonprofits around the globe also attend the commission. They host side events to promote their agendas and meet with delegations to ensure that their perspectives are included within the agreed conclusions.
This year is a high-stakes year, especially after many feminist advocacy groups saw a failure by wealthy countries to provide funding to address climate change’s urgency at COP26, the United Nations annual conference on climate change, held in Glasgow, Scotland.
Tobin, whose organization is part of an alliance of advocacy groups called The Womens Rights Caucus, stated that it is impossible to talk about women’s rights without considering the economic and environmental impacts of the climate crisis.
Tobins is pushing for the United States, and other countries responsible in large part for carbon emissions, to pay developing countries for any loss or damages. Tobin stated that it is a similar pledge to other countries, including the United States, but has not yet fulfilled.
(Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
For example, there’s the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities which says, Yes, all the governments of the world are committed to this, but we acknowledge that there are differences in responsibility and finances, she said. Rich countries should be contributing to a fund that helps the Global South frontline countries who are already feeling the effects.
In 2020, the rich countries were expected to collectively contribute $100 billion per year to the rest the world to adapt the climate crisis. However, they fell $20 billion short.
Patricia Wattimena, climate justice program officer at the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, which is a leading network representing 30 countries, stated that the destruction occurring in places like Indonesia are not just financial.
It is a loss in culture, loss in graveyards, loss at sacred sites, which can lead to loss of identity for Indigenous women, Wattimena, who is Indigenous, and also participates in the commission. Ethniccide means losing your identity. It means that you are lost forever and you are washed out.
Wattimenas is asking for the same consideration at the commission on a global level as the United States frontline communities.
She stated that we are seeing a lot more funding for climate adaptation, mitigation and strategies at national level in climate finance.
These top-down approaches further marginalize women, and people of color. Wattimena, who is based Chiang Mai, said that land grabs in Thailand have led to large-scale tree planting initiatives to offset carbon emissions. She stated that the environment can be protected by focusing on women-led, community-based solutions.
She said that it was important to place women, particularly rural Indigenous women, at center of the climate solution. She also stated that Indigenous communities steward land that has 80 percent of our global biodiversity, despite being only 5 percent of the population.
They should also be prioritized, as they are the most vulnerable to the climate crisis, she stated. Gender-based violence is more common after a disaster such as domestic abuse or sexual exploitation. Women are the most vulnerable to the repercussions of such a disaster. Wattimena stated that they are at the forefront of these struggles. It’s a war.
Sahar Moazami, the UN program officer for Outright, wrote in an email that LGBTQ+ people are at risk of further marginalization. Moazami is the UN program officer at Outright International, a human right group that advocates for LGBTQ+ people. He said that it was difficult for people whose gender is not matched by their identification documents to get housing, medical care, and social services after a natural catastrophe. They hope that the agreed conclusions will highlight these disparate effects on women and girls in all of their diversity and recognize the multiple, intersecting forms discrimination and violence that people experience that increase their vulnerability to the crisis.
Tobin stated that the process of negotiating these agreements will be difficult. It can take hours and sometimes even days to complete. Delegations may also tweak wording at the last moment.
She fears that developed countries’ governments will be too focused on gender equality, and not invest in climate change equity. “But it is something we are not going to let them get away with.
