Event Conference
Stories and Struggles of Women Environmental Defenders | HRC55 Side Event
14 Mar 2024
15:00–16:00
Venue: Room XXV | Palais des Nations
Organization: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, CETIM, FIAN International, Asia Pacific Network of Environment Defenders, Philippine Universal Periodic Review Watch, Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment, Earthjustice
This side event to the 55th session of the Human Rights Council aims to put a spotlight on women environmental defenders and their struggles. The event also aims to formulate concrete recommendations that the UN can adopt to better the conditions of women environmental defenders.
About this Event
Resource-rich but developing countries in the global South are hotbeds of conflict where communities defending their lands and ways of living are at the crosshairs of various forms of attacks by state and non-state forces. Every year, more than 200 environmental defenders are killed with countries like the Philippines, Colombia, and Brazil consistently ranking as worst countries for defenders.
Women and young girls who are environmental defenders bear the brunt of attacks against their selves and their communities. They face not just the threat of physical aggression but gendered violence as well. Their traditional roles as providers and carers in their families and communities also make economic disruptions due to displacement and militarization even harder for them to bear.
Notably in the Philippines, young women anti-reclamation activists Jonila Castro and Jhed Tamano were forcibly abducted and illegally detained in September 2023 by the state armed forces and courageously belied the claims of their captors to secure their own freedom. In the initial statement of UN SR on Climate Change and Human Rights in his visit in November, Ian Fry noted the connection of state policies like the between the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict and the Anti Terrorism Act to attacks against climate frontliners and EHRDs.
This side event to the 55th session of the Human Rights Council aims to put a spotlight on women environmental defenders and their struggles. The event also aims to formulate concrete recommendations that the UN can adopt to better the conditions of women environmental defenders.
Participation
This event will take place only in person. Participants registered for the 55th session of the Human Rights Council can attend the event.
Environment @ HRC55
The 55th regular session of the Human Rights Council (HRC55) is taking place in Geneva and online from 26 February to 5 April 2024. This regularly updated page highlights the environmental-related activities of this session.
