GI-ESCR’s activities at the 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women
This year’s 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66) will focus on the topic of achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental and disaster risk reduction policies and programmes. This CSW is thus a fantastic space to break down silos between civil society from the environmental and human rights field.
For the past few years, the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has been working on the human rights angle of gender-just green transitions, including on the impact of renewable energy on women’s human rights. In light of CSW66, we have been partnering up with leading experts and organisations to strengthen the narrative that green transition efforts must be guided by a human rights compass and to ensure that women’s human rights remain at the forefront of conversations and negotiations at CSW66.
Therefore, GI-ESCR engages in the following activities around CSW66:
Statements:
GI-ESCR has submitted a written statement to CSW66 highlighting the need to ensure that the energy transitions not only tackle the climate emergency, but also addresses energy poverty and the deeply embedded gender inequalities that continue to be pervasive in the energy industry. The statement therefore puts forward a set of key policy recommendations to embed principles of human rights and gender equality in the global transformation of energy systems. You can read the statement here.
Together with AIDA, IWRAW-AP and PSI, GI-ESCR presented an oral statement at the general debate of CSW in which we highlight the need for a gender-just renewable energy transition which is guided by international human rights law and make several recommendations for States to ensure women are at the forefront of the green transition movement. You can listen to the statement here.
Events:
CSW66 NGO Forum:
Achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment: towards a gender just energy transition.
17 March 2022, 08:00-09:30 EST
This event will convene a group of civil society organizations and experts to explore how a feminist transition to renewable energy can advance an alternative development model to ensure a gender- just and rights-aligned transition to a low carbon world. This poses several questions: How could we make sure that movements pushing for climate action and a just transition incorporate a transformative agenda that considers women’s needs, experiences, and concerns? How can the human rights framework help guide and inform the transition to low carbon societies? How can the energy transition be used as an opportunity to advance a feminist and low carbon future?
CSW66 Side Event:
Women’s Empowerment for a Sustainable World: Towards a Gender Just Transition.
18 March 2022, 11:00 – 12:30 EST
This event will convene a group of women policymakers, experts, and representatives of civil society organizations to explore the gender dimensions of the energy transition and its implications for climate justice. It will provide a space for key stakeholders to voice concerns on how the green transition may be blindsiding gender issues and to share initiatives and case studies that have been successful in combating women’s energy poverty and boosting women’s participation in the new renewable energy industry.
The event will be an opportunity to challenge gender stereotypes and celebrate women’s roles as key actors of change, as well as to explore how to harnesses women’s full potential to rethink the way we power our societies and reshape the course of the energy transitions to ensure a sustainable, gender, and climate-just future for all.
CSW66 NGO Forum:
Care at the centre of a feminist, unionised, just, green future
24 March 2022, 15:00 – 17:00 EST
Feminist, trade union, tax justices and human rights organisations will explain how rebuilding the social organisation of care could enable a just and equitable transition to a decarbonised, solidarity-based, and unionised future. The event aims to influence the discussions on climate justice from a feminist and trade unionist perspective, follow-up outcomes at the CSW, and influence gender transformative, green, COVID recovery plans that are centred on rebuilding the social organisation of care.
CSW66 NGO Forum:
Centering Care in a Feminist Intersectional Approach to Loss and Damage
24 March 2022, 08:00 EDT
In this event, feminist organizers and advocates will shine a light on the structural drivers of the climate crisis; how the climate crisis is impacting economic, social and cultural rights; what it means to take a feminist, intersectional approach to loss and damage; and the need to center care as a structural response to loss and damage, towards advancing a just and equitable transition. In doing so they will focus on the human rights obligations of States to ensure substantive equality, and prevent and redress intersectional discrimination that marginalized individuals and communities may experience in legal, political, policy and institutional responses to loss and damage. Participants will further explore avenues to achieve change including via human rights and climate justice centered narratives and advocacy, campaigning and strategic litigation, grounded in larger mobilizing and organizing strategies.
CSW66 NGO Forum:
Women's Leadership to Tackle Climate Change & Disasters
16 March 2022, 08:00 – 09:30 EDT
This event will explore how women of all ages in all their diversity are taking leadership in climate and disaster-related issues to help shape a peaceful and "more caring and better world”. The Sendai Framework guiding principles 19(g) states that “gender, age, disability and cultural perspective should be integrated in all policies and practices, and women and youth leadership should be promoted.” We aim to address this topic with an intersectional perspective. We understand that gender justice is not one-dimensional and see the interconnected relationship in our issues. Humanity’s current challenge with the COVID-19 pandemic provides us with an opportunity to recommit ourselves in working in solidarity, to further strengthen our connections to advance gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.
Videos:
In the context of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) and the 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women and when an energy transition is discussed that involves an unprecedented technical and technological change to move from one energy source to another and counteract the effects of climate change, the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR) with the support of FES-Geneva and key partners launched the following three videos:
Portraits of a Feminist Energy Transition: The experience in Nepal
The Women Network for Energy and Environment (WoNEE) is a national grassroots of women in Nepal. In the video, they explain the recent work they have been doing with women on the ground to empower them to become energy and appliances entrepreneurs in their communities.
Portraits of a Feminist Energy Transition: The experience in Yemen
Asia Almashreqi, Chairperson of Sustainable Development Foundation (SDF Yemen), tells the story of an empowered group of women in Yemen that are actively participating in providing sustainable energy solutions to their communities while creating income earning opportunities in the face of a humanitarian crisis.
Portraits of a Feminist Energy Transition - The experience in Guatemala.
This video produced in collaboration with the Interamerican Association of Environmental Defense (AIDA) tells the story of María, an indigenous woman of the Maya Chuj ethnic group who lives in the micro-region of Yich K'isis in Guatemala. This region has severely been affected by the development of three large-scale hydroelectric projects.