Row erupts at COP29 with Vatican over gender rights

The Vatican has blocked talks on women’s rights at the UN climate conference following a row over gay and transgender issues, sources have told BBC News.

Pope Francis’ representatives are working with Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, and Egypt to block a deal that would have provided more support, including financial aid, to women at the forefront of climate change, Colombia’s environment minister told the BBC.

Charities including ActionAid said it was important to reach an agreement as the UN estimates that women and girls currently make up 80% of those displaced by climate change.

Representatives of the Vatican, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran and Egypt did not respond to requests for comment.

Countries at this year’s COP29 climate conference in Azerbaijan were supposed to review the UN’s ten-year action plan to ensure that any work related to climate change takes into account the experiences of women and transfers more money to them.

It has been called the Lima Work Program on Gender for ten years.

But the Vatican, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran and Egypt now want no reference to “gender” – out of concern it could include transgender women, and want references to a gay woman removed, the BBC has been told by charities watching the talks and interviews from others countries.

This set up an agreement to advance women’s access to support on climate change, they said.

“It is not acceptable,” said the minister of the environment of Colombia and the leader of the talks, Susana Muhamad, about the nature of this incident. He was one of the only representatives of the country willing to speak on the record. Others spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity and why they were taking part in ongoing discussions.

“Latin American countries are working hard – we will not allow the gender system to go down and allow human rights to go down,” he told BBC News.

It has been more than a decade since countries around the world have acknowledged that women bear the brunt of climate change, often because of their caregiving role and the disruption of access to reproductive services during climate disasters.

According to UN Womenby 2050 approximately 240 million more women and girls will experience food insecurity as a result of climate change compared to 131 million more men and boys. At the same time only 0.01% global funding goes to climate change initiatives that also address women.

In the new plan African countries and the EU wanted to include the line that not all women experience climate change in the same way – that they can differ depending on “sex, gender, age and ethnicity”.

The Vatican, along with Saudi Arabia, Russia, Egypt and Iran, said they objected to the use of the word “gender” which they thought could include transgender women, negotiators told the BBC.

The charities that watched this were surprised since during the ten years these countries did not object to the use of this term.

“I was shocked when the Vatican raised its flag and contradicted the language of human rights,” said Sostina Takure, of the Christian organization ACT Alliance. “My heart broke into a million pieces.”

Mwanahamisi Singano, who is the leader of the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation, told the BBC that a group of countries also oppose the document as they do not want to mention gay women.

Ms. Singano, who was in the discussion room, said that countries like Iran argue that homosexuality is illegal under their laws and therefore they will not allow those groups to be honored in the document.

Charities said the country’s shutdown has put the entire agreement on women’s support in jeopardy with three days left for the conference.

“I think if things continue the way they are, it doesn’t look good for women’s rights in negotiations,” said Zahra Hdidou, senior climate adviser at ActionAid.

When asked why the Vatican and others are stepping in now, almost a decade later, one state spokesman told the BBC: “It’s part of a wider global backlash against women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights.”

Pope Francis has allowed priests to bless same-sex couples under certain circumstances and last year said transgender people could be baptized in the Catholic Church as long as doing so did not cause scandal or “confusion”.

But the Vatican said it continued to view marriage as between a man and a woman, and in April said it remained firmly opposed to gender reform, gender stereotypes and parenthood according to a document called “Dignitas Infinita” (Infinite Dignity).

The existing UN program on gender and climate will expire at the end of this year, which means that if no agreement is reached at COP29 there will be no specific global program to support women facing climate change.

But Ms Hdidou told the BBC that part of the problem was the under-representation of women in the debates. Last year only 36% of the participants in the conference were women, according to the UN.

“Our voice is often silenced in the COP29 negotiation rooms. That means we will get results that do not reflect the lives of women in climate-affected areas,” he said.

At the beginning of the conference the EU published a letter – now supported by 17 countries – saying “our ability to tackle the climate crisis depends on our commitment to empowering women and girls, in all their diversity.”