Published on: 11/21/2024 – 7:42 p.m.Amended: 11/21/2024 – 7:40 p.m.

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Previous climate summits, like many UN events, have regularly discussed the need to involve women, who studies show face a disproportionate burden from rising temperatures and climate disasters. planet.

But during COP29 in Azerbaijan, a draft proposal was devoid of any reference to the experience of women and even of the word “diversity”, Ireland’s first female president, Mary Robinson, present in Baku, told AFP for negotiations.

Saudi Arabia has been the key force in opposing the gender narrative and has benefited from support from Russia, which talks about promoting traditional values, Robinson and other participants said.

After years of attempts, opponents of gendered language now feel “emboldened,” Robinson said.

“I think they feel like they have the right to do it now, because gender is regressing. There is a backlash against gender in the United States, for example, and in some parts of Europe where governance is right-wing,” said Robinson, who also served as a U.N. human rights commissioner and helped form a group of veteran leaders known as the The Elders.

A draft text circulated at COP29, whose top priority was to increase money for the hardest-hit countries, maintained a reference to gender, saying that climate finance must be “based on human rights.” ‘man and gender sensitive’.

More concretely, COP29 will decide on a proposal aimed at extending for another 10 years an initiative launched in 2014 in Lima to systematically integrate gender into the political work of the United Nations climate body.

Opponents have refrained from openly campaigning against gender language.

But a Saudi official speaking on behalf of the Arab Group at COP29 said human rights issues were “irrelevant” to climate finance.

“The final decision must be short, concise and precise,” Albara Tawfiq told delegates.

Decisions at UN climate conferences must be made by consensus, even if the meaning of consensus is debated.

“It’s not so normal anymore”

According to a United Nations study, around 80 percent of people displaced by climate change are women and girls, increasing the risks of human trafficking and other abuses.

However, political decision-makers are predominantly men. At last year’s COP28 in Dubai, which activists credit for progress on gender, 34 percent of delegates were women, according to the Women’s Environment and Development Organization.

On Thursday, during a day on gender equality organized by the UN, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock gathered other female envoys to COP29 for a group photo.

“Normally it’s just a normal thing, but we realized — not only at this COP, but also before, but especially at this COP — that somehow normal things are no longer,” she said.

Highlighting the effect of climate change on women, Baerbock called for a renewal of the Lima Agenda and language on gender.

“To fight the climate crisis, it takes women’s power, it takes women’s power, and we can only fight the climate crisis together,” she said.

Ayshka Najib, a feminist climate activist at COP29, said the Azerbaijani hosts had not made gender a priority, but credited pressure for reinstating limited language.

“This COP was supposed to be as much a COP on gender as a COP on finance, and yet what we are witnessing is not progress, but alarming regression on gender in all points of the order of the day,” she said.

Canadian climate negotiator Catherine Stewart said maintaining the focus on gender was bowing to reality.

“We are worried,” she said. “A text that takes us back 10 years is unacceptable.”

© 2024 AFP