Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Climate change is one of the most formidable challenges of our time that threatens our way of life and the very existence of humankind. While climate change has negative impacts on all persons, it affects women and girls disproportionately. During floods and severe storms fueled by climate change, for example, women are more likely to die than men because they lack access to essential information on how to survive in these emergencies. In certain regions of the world—such as Sub-Saharan Africa—women smallholder farmers are bearing the brunt of climate change because, in the aftermath of droughts, these women have fewer opportunities than men to diversify their livelihoods and ensure an adequate standard of living for themselves and their families. Often, women and girls are excluded from participating in the development of plans and policies to address climate change. Unsurprisingly, the problematic gendered dimension of climate change has caught the attention of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (“CEDAW” or “the Committee”), the body that monitors State parties’ compliance with the 1979 United Nations (“U.N.”) Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (“the Women Convention” or “Convention”). On March 13, 2018, CEDAW issued General Recommendation No. 37 (“Gen. Rec. 37”) on the gender-related dimensions of disaster risk reduction in the context of climate change. In this highly consequential document, CEDAW sheds light on how State parties to the Women Convention should give effect to fundamental principles, State obligations, and rights enshrined—or implied—in the Convention when managing climate change. This Article critically investigates the main contents of Gen. Rec. 37 and how CEDAW relies on this Recommendation to assess State parties’ implementation of the Women Convention in the climate change era. By doing so, this Article contributes to academic studies that have pointed out how, in Gen. Rec. 37, CEDAW frames climate change as a gender equality issue. This Article builds on said literature by introducing a new analytical perspective: it argues that, with Gen. Rec. 37, CEDAW has sweepingly reconceptualized the normative contents of the Women Convention in terms of climate change and expanded the scope of the Convention by incorporating gender-responsive climate change management as one of its main requirements. With Gen. Rec. 37, CEDAW has thereby significantly altered the very raison d’être of the Women Convention. Furthermore, this Article maintains that CEDAW systematically utilizes Gen. Rec. 37 to appraise whether, in practice, State parties to the Women Convention are implementing gender-sensitive climate change strategies. This Article develops its investigation in four Parts. Part I introduces the Women Convention, CEDAW, and its competence to prepare General Recommendations. Subsequently, Part II delineates and critically discusses the main contents of Gen. Rec. 37. First, it elucidates why, in Gen. Rec. 37, CEDAW deems climate change to be an obstacle to the realization of women’s rights as contained in the Women Convention. Second, it looks at whether, in Gen. Rec. 37, CEDAW provides a definition of climate change and highlights the main rationale for the Recommendation. The remainder of Part II carefully analyzes Gen. Rec. 37’s text to show that CEDAW has significantly redrawn the contours of fundamental principles, State obligations and rights under the Women Convention through a climate change-focused lens. The analysis illuminates how CEDAW has extrapolated novel and detailed climate dimensions of said principles, obligations, and rights that elevate gender-sensitive climate action to one of the main requirements of the Women Convention, thereby significantly expanding the Convention’s ratione materiae. Part III reviews Concluding Observations CEDAW has prepared between 2018 and 2024, after examining reports that State parties to the Women Convention must submit every four years to inform CEDAW of the progress made in the implementation of the Convention. The review demonstrates that CEDAW, through a systematic reliance on Gen. Rec. 37 in the Concluding Observations, has transformed Gen. Rec. 37 into an analytical and operational tool to: (1) assess whether State parties to the Women Convention are devising gender-responsive climate strategies, and (2) make relevant country-specific recommendations. Part IV offers concluding remarks.