Advancing Justice for Women
The year 2022 was one of action and mobilization for the powerful women in RRI’s coalition. We mobilized over 75 Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community organizations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, amplifying their voices and reach in international spaces and consolidating their networks and movements to jointly address challenges and opportunities facing women’s land and forest tenure rights. We held five cross-regional virtual workshops to identify common women’s rights advocacy agendas on subjects ranging from women’s intergenerational leadership, economic initiatives, tenure rights policy reforms, contributions toward food security, conservation action, and climate change mitigation.
Here are some highlights of our achievements in pursuing gender justice.
The common challenge of lack of access to direct climate funding across all three of our focus regions led to the creation of a new advocacy tool for the women members of our coalition. Our Call to Action, developed by Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women across Asia, Africa, and Latin America and launched on International Women’s Day, calls upon donors, governments, and their allies to scale up direct funding for grassroots initiatives led by women to address climate change in their lands and forests.
“Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women and girls should be leaders of climate action, not victims of climate policies.”
– Archana Soreng, youth climate activist from the Kharia Tribe in India and member of the UN Secretary General’s Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change
At CoP27, the Call to Action catalyzed the creation of the Women in Global South Alliance for Tenure and Climate, a first-of-its-kind initiative to enhance women’s strategic advocacy at the National and International levels. The Alliance’s launch was termed as one of the most key outcomes of the global climate conference by international media.