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Calling for the Right to Energy: Mapping International Human Rights for a Gender-Just Energy Transition
By Genta Suzuki, Siân Posy and Zeynep Baysar, students at the University of Essex’s Human Rights Centre Clinic
As global demand for renewable energy increases, the differential impacts on women and girls have become more evident, revealing systemic challenges and human rights violations. For energy transition to be gender-just, it must go beyond simply a technical shifting from one form of energy to another: it should fundamentally transform the energy model to ensure it is gender-responsive, fair, and equitable.
A human rights perspective on the feminist transition to renewable energy emphasises several key issues, including the gendered impact of energy poverty, women’s underrepresentation in decision-making and employment inequalities, disproportionate effects of land loss and displacement on women, gender-based violence, and danger to human rights defenders.
Despite the significant human rights and gender implications of the energy transition, International Human Rights Law (IHRL) is just beginning to consider these issues. For instance, the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has recognised the importance of advancing a just energy transition, referencing the right to electricity and underscoring the necessity of sustainable energy solutions. This notion is further supported by the Special Rapporteurs on extreme poverty and human rights and on the right to adequate housing.
Although access to energy is not explicitly recognised as an independent right under IHRL, it is inherently linked to established human rights, such as the right to health and an adequate standard of living, a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and development. However, these rights alone are not sufficient to address the varied impacts of the energy transition. Ensuring greater accountability of governments and private entities for their actions and inactions concerning energy, as well as opposing projects that could harm communities, such as mining activities, underscores the necessity for recognising the right to energy.
The imperative of providing clean renewable energy services is also being increasingly recognised in human rights litigation while addressing energy transition in the context of state obligations to mitigate climate change. However, international frameworks still lack provisions to incorporate a gender perspective and advance a gender-just energy transition.
In our research to address these issues we produced a database using the Universal Human Rights Index to map trends and patterns in how the intersection of energy, gender and health are addressed by United Nations (UN) human rights treaty bodies and special rapporteurs. This was corroborated by interviews with four experts active in the fields of energy, gender and human rights.
As a result of this study, we identified 139 relevant recommendations addressing the energy transition between 2000-2023, which is below 1% of all recommendations, with more than half of the recommendations issued after 2022. It is regrettable that most of the results are merely general recommendations to encourage the transition away from fossil fuels. Some recommendations address the energy-gender-health intersection, such as the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), touching on the women’s disproportional health risks due to the usage of fossil fuels in cooking and heating and the uneven burden of unpaid household labour and care responsibilities in the private sphere. Yet, most relevant recommendations tend to address access to energy, health and gender equality independently, rarely recognising that these are inextricably connected.
The total of the 139 results obtained in the study pertains to 79 states, with no significant regional bias. While issues like access to energy and adequate consultation of ethnic minorities in the energy transition are often cited in the results related to countries of the Global South, problems are also present in countries of the Global North. For example, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty mentions in their visit report to Spain that “people are obliged to choose between heating their homes and feeding their children”, insisting on the necessity to ensure measures to prevent the utilities of vulnerable households from being suspended.
Fourteen human rights monitoring bodies issued relevant results, with the CEDAW Committee and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) taking the lead with 38 recommendations each. However, there is a lack of cohesion between results; exposing the need for a legal framework and a specialised human rights mechanism to provide legal ground to appeal the right to energy holistically. As this topic covers a wide range of issues, such as access to energy, health impacts of fossil fuels and women’s equal participation in the energy transition, they tend to be addressed sporadically as isolated issues that are not interrelated. The absence of a legal framework that explicitly recognises the right to energy inevitably leads to the need to draw on other rights for discussion, making it difficult to argue on the axis of ‘energy’.
While regard for the right to energy and its intersection with gender and health is increasing, this is marred by fragmented and limited international legal recognition and undermined by the failure of the IHRL framework to acknowledge energy as a public good and service rather than as a commodity. A gender-just energy transition requires systemic changes for equitable access to clean energy, aligned with human rights principles. UN experts urge leveraging the energy transition to advance laws and policies for a just transition, holding stakeholders accountable, and ensuring the pursuit of the SDGs and the compliance of international human rights obligations. This must include dynamically addressing colonial legacies and the unequal rates of resource extraction to avoid deepening global disparities.
Reframing energy as a fundamental component of human wellness rather than a commodity is essential to ensure a just transition is as equitable and universal as possible, enabling the transition from energy poverty to energy access. The commodification of energy transforms people and communities into consumers and customers whose access to essential services is at the behest of economic income and stability. This issue is exacerbated further through privatisation models in regions that are struggling with more liberalised markets, wherein State regulation is limited.
The overwhelming solution that our expert interviewees provided was the need for a codified human right to energy. Recognising and protecting the right to energy in law can enhance a rights-based approach to energy, however, defining this right raises questions about its scope, the risk of perpetuating fossil fuel use, and the role of private businesses in energy access.
This recognition establishes a firm legal foundation for energy justice and offers individuals and communities a legal means to claim their right to energy and seek remedies for any violations. It would obligate states to ensure energy access, but this alone will not adequately address the intricate nexus of these issues. The solution is complex and yields myriad challenges, particularly in a context that perpetually struggles with state compliance and interpretation of rights. Within this context, the segregation of rights pertaining to a just transition must be addressed by breaking down the silos of ESCR, women’s rights, and the environment, to ensure these issues are addressed cohesively.
Implementing a right to energy raises questions about setting universal minimum standards of energy access and reliability. There is a risk that states would interpret this new obligation as a means to continue fossil fuel extraction and consumption in order to fulfil this right, compounded by the friction of breaking energy out of the neoliberal market and into the human rights sphere. To address this, the right to energy should contain specific entitlements and obligations with a strong consideration for gendered dimensions, health implications, and its relationship to the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment and the phasing out of fossil fuel.
Emphasising sustainable and renewable energy within this right could mitigate these risks, aligning energy access with global sustainability and climate goals. This approach would also necessitate considering the role of private businesses and the impacts of privatisation on energy access, ensuring that the right to energy supports equitable and sustainable development.
While a gender-just transition will require multilateral cooperation, it is imperative that these issues are adequately addressed. Ultimately, while access to energy is not explicitly codified as an independent right in IHRL, it is inherently linked with numerous established rights. Establishing a codified right to energy would create a legal framework to hold governments and private actors accountable, ensuring that energy transitions are conducted in a manner that respects and promotes human rights. This would provide a robust foundation for addressing the multifaceted impacts of energy transitions, ensuring that they contribute to a more equitable and sustainable future for all.
You may read the full report here.
Genta Suzuki (left) is a Masters student at the University of Essex in Theory and Practice of Human Rights. His areas of interest include women’s and LGBTQ rights and gender analysis in economic /development activities. He is currently working on his dissertation on queer kinship rights in Asia.
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Siân Posy (centre) is an International Human Rights Law Masters student at the University of Essex and an active member of the university’s Human Rights Centre Clinic. They are currently researching for their dissertation on environmental sacrifice zones, and have been awarded a Sustainable Transitions PhD candidacy at Essex on a project titled “Human Rights in Postgrowth Proposals and Policies”.
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Zeynep Baysar (right) is an International Human Rights Law LLM student at the University of Essex and an active member of the university’s Human Rights Centre Clinic. She is currently working on her dissertation on climate change and human rights litigations before the ECtHR and IACtHR.
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Genta Suzuki, Siân Posy and Zeynep Baysar
Students at the University of Essex’s Human Rights Centre Clinic conducted a research project in collaboration with the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR) to map the UN human rights standards addressing the energy transition. In this blog post, they discuss the project’s findings, highlighting trends, patterns, and gaps in the human rights framework related to the transition to sustainable energy. They shed light on contemporary human rights standards on energy and illuminate what a gender-just energy transition should entail.
