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Explore our work with partners, globally and locally, to tackle social and economic injustice using a human rights lens.

GI-ESCR at the 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women

GI-ESCR at the 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women

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. 

 

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Climate and Environmental Justice

We have advanced rights-based and gender-transformative transition frameworks through research that centres the lived experiences of women and marginalised communities on the frontlines of extractive energy policies, promoting climate and energy frameworks attentive to the social and care-related impacts of transition pathways. We have developed a clear vision for a gender-just transition, firmly rooted in gender and human rights norms, establishing both the legal basis and the direction for the transformative changes our planet and societies urgently need. In particular, the ‘Guiding Principles for Gender Equality and Human Rights in the Energy Transition’, a collective effort built through online consultations, an in-person workshop and multiple rounds of revision with activists, practitioners and experts from around the world, outline a transformative vision for reshaping global energy systems through a human rights and gender equality lens.

Our work recognises that the climate emergency is both an existential threat and an opportunity to reimagine societies built on social, gender, economic and environmental justice. We ground our advocacy in feminist and intersectional principles, prioritising the agency and perspectives of communities in the Global South who have contributed the least to the climate emergency yet face its most devastating consequences. Central to our approach is the understanding that energy is not merely a commodity but a fundamental human right; essential for dignity, health, education, work and the realisation of countless other rights. We challenge approaches to the energy transition that risk replicating the harmful patterns of fossil fuel extraction and, instead, advocate for transformative policies that ensure human rights and gender equality as central to building climate-resilient societies rooted in dignity, justice and planetary well-being.

What's next?

We will continue to challenge approaches that treat energy transition as merely a technical shift, instead positioning it as an opportunity to reimagine economies and societies rooted in dignity for all, with particular attention to communities in the Global South who have contributed least to the climate emergency yet are most exposed to its worst effects.

We will connect community-level evidence and the lived experiences of those on the frontlines of extractive policies to national reform and global norm-setting, breaking down silos between human rights, gender, and climate movements, and advancing a shared vision that recognises just transitions as not only fundamental to achieving climate-resilient and sustainable societies, but as transformative pathways that advance social and gender equality, redistribute power and resources equitably, and ensure that energy systems serve the public good rather than profit.

We will mainstream rights-based and genderjust transition priorities in key multilateral spaces (particularly, within the Just Transition Work Programme and the to-be-developed Just Transition Mechanism, within the UNFCCC) to guarantee that just transitions are advanced at all levels.

We will also translate our work, through strategic advocacy, into at least two concrete policy wins, whether promoted, adopted, implemented, or scaled, in priority countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, South Africa, or Kenya), ensuring these policies align with human rights standards, centre gender equality, and reflect the needs and views of affected communities.

We will build momentum for the progressive recognition of the right to sustainable energy to shift dominant narratives away from purely extractive solutions that sideline gendered impacts, community participation, and Global South perspectives.

Economic Justice and Climate Finance

Our work has transformed the global discussion on fiscal policy in a more just, emancipatory and sustainable direction. Our approach has combined both high-level, expert contributions within decisionmaking circles, with bold, impactful work on narrative change with the general public.

We have been instrumental in the inclusion of human rights as a guiding principle of the future United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, a multilateral instrument with the potential of raising approx. USD 492 billion per year in public revenues currently foregone to global tax abuse. In the process leading to the ‘Compromiso de Sevilla’ decided at FfD4, we proposed and succeeded in creating a specific human rights workstream within the Civil Society Financing for Development Mechanism, which was critical to ensure that explicit commitments on the matter were included in the negotiating outcome. In a context of cutbacks in multilateral institutions, we have amplified the capacities of technical experts, providing rigorous technical support and leveraging our influence to ensure the enactments of groundbreaking standard-setting instruments, such as the 2025 UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Statement on Fiscal Policy and Human Rights, and the first ex oficio hearing on the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights on Fiscal and Economic Policies to Address Poverty and Structural Inequality, leading to an upcoming thematic resolution on the matter. We have also bridged the silos between multilateral tax discussions and climate finance debates, promoting ambitious financing commitments to increase international and domestic resource mobilisation during COP 28, 29 and 30.

At the regional level, our engagement with fiscal cooperation platforms such as the Platform for Fiscal Cooperation of Latin America and the Caribbean (PTLAC), where we are member of its Civil Society Consultative Council, and the African Anti-IFFs Policy Tracker, for which we participated in the pilot mission in Ivory Coast together with Tax Justice Network Africa (TJNA), have been critical in cementing a growing engagement between tax administrations and ministries of finance with international legal experts, exploring actionable and transformative initiatives, such as the taxation of high-net-worth individuals, beneficial ownership registries and corporate countryby-country reports, to be implemented at the international level.

At the local level, our interventions in fiscal reform debates in Chile, Brazil, Colombia and Nigeria have contributed to shaping legislative outcomes in a more progressive, rights-compliant direction.

As for our leadership in narrative change, we have a measurable track record in delivering tailored, innovative campaigns which have decisively expanded economic justice constituencies by appealing to a broader tent. In Latin America and the Caribbean, we created the ‘Date Cuenta’ campaign, coordinating over 40 organisations across civil society to deliver plain language, innovative messaging connecting progressive fiscal reforms to the financing of health, education and social protection. ‘Date Cuenta’ generated over 55 original campaign messages that were tailored to the realities of seven priority countries (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Honduras) and disseminated in Spanish, Portuguese and English. In doing so, we convened more than 65 online co-creation workshops with partners, coordinating a unified communications strategy which combined digital outreach, press and media coverage, and collaboration with influencers. Ultimately, ‘Date Cuenta’ resulted in more than 60,000 interactions on social media, coverage in major regional and international media outlets, including El País, Deutsche Welle, Bloomberg and France 24, and the participation of at least 63 social media influencers through 58 dedicated publications. In collaboration with Fundación Gabo and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, we also organised a two-day workshop in Bogota with 20 journalists from 13 countries, building a regional network trained in a human rights-based approach to fiscal policy that has since generated published media coverage on outlets such as La Diaria, Ciper, El Diario Ar and Milenio. Through ‘Date Cuenta’ and our regional advocacy, we strengthened civil society engagement in key processes, including the Financing for Development track and FfD4, co-organised highlevel dialogues with states and civil society from Latin America and Africa.

What's next?

We will shape the UN Tax Convention and its Protocols so they embed human rights principles, and we will stay engaged through follow-up processes (including the expected Conference of the Parties) to support effective implementation. We will keep linking tax and climate finance so that new resources mobilised through fiscal cooperation are channelled to adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage, in line with UNFCCC commitments.

Public Services for Care Societies

We have translated participatory research into accountability and policy outcomes.

In Ivory Coast, our work with Mouvement Ivoirien des Droits Humains and affected communities since 2023 exposed how privatisation and lack of accountability restrict access to quality healthcare. It contributed to the closure of 1,022 illegal private health centres, an executive instrument strengthening the regulation of private hospitals across the country, and the creation of a permanent complaints management committee in healthcare through a bylaw issued by the prefect of Gagnoa. Partners engaged through this process also advanced concrete improvements at facility level: members of the Gagnoa Midwives Association who took part in the participatory action research pooled resources to renovate the neonatal unit of the Regional Hospital, and the Director of the Gagnoa General Hospital launched an action plan to expand services and improve patient reception, with the facility receiving the award for best hospital in the country in 2025.

In Kenya, our research with the Mathare Education Taskforce documented the absence of public schools and the expansion of private provision, evidencing impacts on households and caregivers and strengthening demands for free, quality public education. This work contributed to stronger community agency and collective organisation, alongside ongoing strategies ranging from communications to litigation to secure a public school in the area, some involving GI-ESCR and others led independently.

Across Africa, this work is complemented by a multi-country study examining the human rights implications of austerity in education and health, including how regressive fiscal policies, rising debt burdens and persistent underinvestment undermine the financing and delivery of public services.

In Latin America, from 29 November to 2 December 2021, over a thousand representatives from over one hundred countries, from grassroots movements, advocacy, human rights, and development organisations, feminist movements, trade unions, and other civil society organisations, met in Santiago, Chile, and virtually, to discuss the critical role of public services for our future. Following the meeting, the Santiago Declaration on Public Services was adopted to demand universal access to quality, gender-transformative and equitable public services as the foundation of a fair and just society.

We are currently advancing work on care systems, linking public services and fiscal justice through integrated research, advocacy and communications, including a regional campaign framing care as a collective responsibility requiring sustained public investment.

What's next?

In Ivory Coast, we will evaluate and strengthen the complaints management committee and position it as a replicable model for other health facilities. In Kenya, we will support the Mathare community to co-design a model public school for Mabatini and Ngei wards, grounded in human rights standards. Building on our multi-country austerity study, we will drive national advocacy on financing for education and health: advancing reforms in Ghana; launching a fiscal policy and public services financing agenda in Kenya through the CESCR process and targeted coalition work; and, in Nigeria, using the new tax acts in force since 1 January 2026 to catalyse a national accountability campaign for adequately funded, quality public services. In Latin America, we will amplify locally led care pilots across 8 countries and turn lessons into influence—advancing care policies that strengthen care organisations, protect care workers’ rights, support unpaid caregivers, include disability and family networks, and redistribute care more equitably.