On the eve of International Women’s Day, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) adopted a new General Recommendation on the gender-related dimensions of disaster risk reduction in the context of climate change. It marks a major milestone in tackling the particular impacts climate change has on the rights of women and girls worldwide.
Around the world, women and girls are at particular risk in the context of climate change. Crises caused by climate change often exacerbate existing gender inequalities — for example, inequalities in food security and access to healthcare — and other forms of discrimination. Further, as climate change makes storms and natural disasters increasingly common and severe, they may make humanitarian crises more common, thereby increasing the risk of gender-based violence. These are just a few ways that climate change disproportionately impacts women and girls.
Additionally, respecting and promoting women’s political and civil rights require ensuring that women effectively participate in climate-related decision making. Empowering women around the world to participate fully in climate responses would improve the effectiveness of these policies and projects, as well as help address the inherent gender discrimination found in climate impacts and action.
In the past few years, CEDAW has been active in incorporating climate action into the human rights obligations of States. CEDAW has often noted that climate change and natural disasters disproportionately impact women. Since 2009, CEDAW has worked to “ensure that climate change and disaster risk reduction measures are gender responsive, sensitive to indigenous knowledge systems and respect human rights.”
The General Recommendation brings these obligations together in one place to provide guidance to all 189 parties to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (Convention). This General Recommendation will be the first document adopted by a human rights treaty body that directly and authoritatively interprets how States must integrate international human rights obligations into climate action.
So far, CEDAW has addressed the impacts of climate change on women through individual recommendations to States. In 2017 alone, CEDAW addressed a wide range of issues including:
- Gender parity in leadership positions for climate action,
- Economic empowerment through renewable energy employment,
- The disproportionate impacts of climate change on rural women,
- Gender-based disaster preparedness, and
- The need for States to reduce the extraction and exports of fossil fuels to reduce gender-skewed impacts of climate change.
The General Recommendation builds on these themes, noting that in many contexts, “gender inequalities constrain the influence and control that women and girls have over decisions governing their lives…. As a result of these inequalities, women and girls are more likely to be exposed to disaster induced risks and losses to their livelihood and they are also less able to adapt to change in climactic conditions.” Most of the General Recommendation focuses on climate action and disaster responsiveness rather than State obligations to prevent and reduce climate impacts.
The General Recommendation focuses on three key principles: (1) equality and non-discrimination; (2) participation and empowerment; and (3) accountability. All three principles are fundamental to ensuring that States implement climate action in accordance with the Convention.
The General Recommendation also acknowledges that climate action affects other women’s rights, including the rights of children (girls), women in indigenous populations, women in poverty, women with disabilities, and older women. The General Recommendation addresses several areas of concern where women are especially at risk due to the impacts of climate change, including the right to an adequate standard of living (including food, water, and sanitation), the rights to education and information, gender-based violence against women (particularly in the wake of climate change disaster responsiveness), and migration and forced displacement due to climate change.
The finalization of the General Recommendation by CEDAW is particularly timely as it echoes the recent adoption of a Gender Action Plan under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Gender Action Plan recalls the duty of States to respect, protect, and consider their obligations on human rights and gender equality when taking action on climate change.
The wide scope of concrete recommendations that CEDAW has provided to States on the impacts of climate change on human rights is commendable and should not be understated. Throughout the year, CEDAW will continue to review individual States’ implementation of the Convention. This process offers further opportunities for the Committee to continue interpreting the Convention’s obligations in different national circumstances.
The inevitable result of unabated climate change is continued discrimination against women, and the General Recommendation provides a framework for how both issues may be tackled as one.
To read more about the ways CEDAW has addressed the gender implications of climate change, please read the synthesis note published by CIEL and the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
By Olivia Bonner, Geneva-based intern
Originally posted on March 13, 2018
Photo by Mountain Partnership at FAO via Flickr