LAUNCH OF THE “FTF IN U.S.” SERIES:
WOMEN’S TRIBUNALS ON GENDER AND CLIMATE JUSTICE
The Feminist Task Force launched the next series of the Women’s Tribunals on Gender and Climate Justice 2012 today at the AWID Forum “Transforming Economic Power to Advance Women’s Rights and Justice” in Istanbul, Turkey. At the Forum session, “Ecological Health of our Planet: The Climate Change Challenge,” FTF Global Coordinator, Rosa Lizarde, launched the follow-up series to the “Strengthening Voices, Search for Solutions” Women’s Tribunal series on Gender and Climate Justice.
“Today we launch the next gender and climate justice tribunals which will take place for the first time in the global North, in the United States,” said Rosa. “All the other gender and climate justice tribunals have taken place in the global South in Asia, Africa and Latin America. It’s time to work in the U.S, in the ‘belly of the beast.’ It’s time to show how climate change is affecting women around the world, in the north and in the south, in similar ways.”
The first women’s tribunal on climate justice in the US will take place in the Central Appalachia Mountains and in partnership with the US-based Loretto at the UN NGO and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC) based in West Virginia, as well as OVEC partners. The Appalachia Mountains is a region that has experienced persistent poverty. The tribunal will highlight how women living in persistent poverty areas and impoverished communities are being affected by climate-related issues. The tribunal will feature the testimony of women throughout the Appalachian mountain region concerning the effects of mountaintop removal and other coal industry abuses on their lives, families, and communities. The tribunal will take place in Charleston, West Virginia on May 10, 2012.
The second tribunal will take place in Chicago, Illinois in June 2012 through partnership with the Loretto at the UN, the Eco-Justice Collaborative and the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO), a community group based in the city’s Mexican-American neighborhood, Little Village. The Tribunal will focus how women of color are being impacted by the City of Chicago’s Fisk and Crawford coal burning power plants, and other coal-related effects to the greater Chicago area.
The Women’s Tribunals have been the flagship work of the FTF in calling attention to the centrality of gender equality to end poverty and making the links between the climate change and the feminization of poverty. The FTF spear-headed the international women’s tribunals on poverty in 2007 and followed-up with tribunals on women and the MDGs (2008), social exclusion (2010), and the two series of women tribunals on gender and climate justice in 2009 and 2011. The 2011 Tribunal series on Gender and Climate Justice was organized in collaboration with GCAP, Greenpeace International, and Inter Press Service, and took place in 15 African, Asian and Latin American countries in the fall of 2011. The Tribunals focused on the collection of authentic, specific and exemplary testimonies of grassroots and rural women who have experienced climate change related problems in their lives and communities, and their search for solutions.
For more information contact:
Rosa G. Lizarde Global Coordinator, Feminist Task Force e-mail: feministtaskforce@gmail.com weblog: www.feministtaskforce.org
Feminist Task Force 