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

The Significance from a Women's Rights Perspective

The Significance from a Women's Rights Perspective

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights at 50: The Significance from a Women's Rights Perspective

 

The Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and ESCR-Net released a publication entitled The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights at 50: The Significance from a Women's Rights Perspective. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) enshrines economic, social and cultural (ESC) human rights, including the right to housing, the right to work and to just conditions of work, the right to food, the right to the highest attainable standard of health, the right to social security, and the right to education, amongst others.  It also recognizes “the equal right of men and women to the enjoyment of all economic, social and cultural rights” and prohibits gender-based discrimination.

2016 marked the 50th anniversary of the ICESCR, and it is an important moment to pause and look at the impacts of the Covenant on the lives of those most impacted by violations of ESC rights violations.  Globally, women represent the majority of the 1.2 billion people living in poverty throughout the world.  There is no aspect of ESC rights that are not relevant to the lives of women, and there is no ESC right which is not directly or indirectly impacted by discrimination on the basis of gender.  Women are also on the front lines of ESC rights advocacy and are often targeted in their roles as human rights defenders, for example as they take up struggles to resist land dispossessions, large scale development projects, and forced evictions.

Notably, the 50th anniversary of the ICESCR comes just one year after the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as the agreed framework for international development.  The 2030 Agenda has a stand-alone Goal on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls (Goal 5), and there are gender equality targets in other Goals, as well as a call for sex disaggregated data across many indicators.  ICESCR represents a powerful framework for claiming women’s ESC rights globally, and within the context of the 2030 Agenda, it is vital to ensuring that international development conforms to international human rights law when it comes to realizing women’s ESC rights.

While progress has been made on various fronts, for example, in relation to girls’ education, inequality with respect to the enjoyment of ESC rights is a central fact of women’s lives and an everyday lived reality for women in every region of the world.  As UN-Women has recognized, the end of poverty can only be achieved with the end of gender-based discrimination, but the global economy is not working for women, and all too often women bear the brunt of increased economic pressures and deteriorating social services.

Ongoing inequality in the enjoyment of ESC rights also contributes to the continuing subordination of women and makes them especially vulnerable to violence, exploitation and other forms of abuse.   Globally, women’s earnings are 24 per cent less than men’s; in many societies, laws and traditions bar women from accessing, controlling and inheriting important resources like land; women worldwide have less access to political power; and women continue to carry an unfair burden when it comes to unpaid care work.

This publication celebrates the significance of the ICESCR from the perspective of advancing and ensuring gender equality and simultaneously points to ways in which the treaty can be utilized even more strategically and effectively to ensure that women’s ESC rights are fully respected, protected and fulfilled towards the goal of achieving gender equality.  While the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)  is sometimes seen as the ‘women’s treaty’ within international human rights law, the truth is that the ICESCR is also directly and extremely relevant to the lives of millions of women worldwide.  As UN-Women has highlighted: “In addition to CEDAW, which is a vital reference point for understanding the meaning of gender equality, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the work of the committee that supervises its work, are also essential to understanding and addressing women’s economic and social rights.” ICESCR provides an important normative framework for claiming and upholding ESC rights, and it recognizes the central principle of gender equality.  In particular, the principle of substantive equality articulated by CEDAW and echoed by ICESCR is also integral to claiming women’s ESC rights.  The right to gender equality is not subject to progressive realization, rather it is an immediate obligation of States parties under ICESCR to ensure that women are able to enjoy their right to equality in relation to ESC rights.  Immediacy of obligations can be contrasted with the notion of progressivity, the latter of which has been described by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) as “a necessary flexibility device,” which, while it applies to the general realization of ESC rights, cannot be said to apply to women’s right to equality.

Finally, this publication seeks to overview the content of normative statements which CESCR has made over the years on various issues relevant to women’s ESC rights, and to highlight cases in which advocates have engaged with CESCR successfully to raise these issues and seek redress for violations of women’s ESC rights.  While it does not address the issue of implementation by States, the publication highlights CESCR’s commentary within the context of many specific country reviews (country and year of review are noted in the footnotes).  However, it is not meant to be an exhaustive commentary on everything that CESCR has said on every issue of interest.

 

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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.