These demands bring together analysis and recommendations developed through the engagement of Women’s Major Group members in the UNECE Regional Forum on Sustainable Development (RFSD) 2026 process, alongside WECF’s work on gender justice, climate justice, energy poverty, water and sanitation, and toxic pollution. They reflect growing concern over militarisation, democratic backsliding, corporate capture, and widening inequality across the UNECE region, and were submitted to the Women’s Major Group Position Paper for the 2026 High Level Political Forum (HLPF).

Our regional context

Across the UNECE region, the 2030 Agenda is being undermined by a convergence of militarisation, democratic backsliding, and deepening inequality, which must be recognised as central—not peripheral—barriers to sustainable development. Armed conflict continues to destroy essential infrastructure, displace communities, and fracture food, water, and energy systems and in the worst instances leading to ecocide, driven by imperial wars and geopolitical power struggles led and sustained by major powers, including the United States, Israel, and Russia. The continued normalisation of these wars, alongside the European Union’s political inaction and selective application of international law, constitutes complicity and erodes the credibility of commitments to human rights and sustainable development. Escalating military expenditure across the region diverts public resources away from social protection, care systems, and climate action, while reinforcing a global political economy rooted in extraction, control, and violence.

At the same time, shrinking civic space, through restrictive legislation such as “foreign agent” laws, the expansion of SLAPPs (strategic lawsuits against public participation), and the escalating repression of feminist, LGBTIQ+, environmental, and human rights defenders, is rapidly eroding the very conditions required for accountable and participatory governance. These dynamics are further intensified by coordinated anti-gender and anti-rights movements that are reshaping political agendas and undermining long-standing commitments to gender equality and human rights . The erosion of multilateralism and the weakening of trust in international institutions are not incidental developments but are closely tied to these dynamics, as selective adherence to international norms and the politicisation of global governance undermine the legitimacy and effectiveness of collective responses to shared crises.

Persistent structural inequalities remain a defining feature across the region, despite formal progress. Access to essential services such as water, energy, housing, and mobility continues to be shaped by affordability, quality, and systemic exclusion, disproportionately affecting women, low-income households, migrants, Roma communities, and other marginalised groups. Energy poverty, affecting a significant proportion of households, is driven by intersecting factors including fossil fuel dependency, inadequate housing, and rising costs, and continues to be addressed through fragmented and insufficient policy responses. These inequalities are not incidental but are produced and reproduced through economic systems that prioritise profit over rights and wellbeing.

Corporate capture and the expansion of market-based approaches across sectors such as energy, infrastructure, housing, and digitalisation are further entrenching inequality and undermining public accountability. The current trajectory of the green transition in the UNECE region is reproducing extractive and neocolonial patterns within the region and beyond; displacing communities and externalising environmental and social costs, while failing to address underlying drivers of the climate crisis. Without strong regulatory frameworks, public investment, and redistribution mechanisms, these approaches risk deepening injustice rather than delivering transformative change. Feminist calls for progressive taxation, the polluter-pays-principle, and public financing mechanisms must therefore be central to regional priorities.

A fundamental shift in economic thinking is required, moving beyond growth-driven models towards systems centred on care, social protection, and ecological limits. Current economic structures continue to undervalue care work, exploit labour, and concentrate wealth and power, undermining both gender equality and environmental sustainability. Strengthening the care economy, ensuring universal access to social protection, and redistributing resources are essential to addressing intersecting crises and advancing just and sustainable societies.

The weakening of multilateralism represents an additional and urgent regional priority. The United Nations is facing an unprecedented financial crisis, driven by the deliberate withholding of assessed contributions by powerful Member States, which is being used as a tool of political pressure and risks undermining the functioning of the entire multilateral system. This erosion of global cooperation is unfolding at a time of escalating climate breakdown, conflict, and inequality, further deepening instability and limiting the capacity for coordinated responses. There is an urgent need for Member States to put pressure on major powers to fulfil their financial obligations in full and on time, to defend multilateralism, and to ensure that global governance remains grounded in democratic, transparent, and accountable processes.

Finally, addressing the structural roots of inequality requires confronting the role of patriarchal power across political, economic, and environmental systems. Across sectors, patterns of control, extraction, and exclusion are reinforced through norms and institutions that prioritise domination and profit over care, cooperation, and sustainability. Transformative change requires dismantling these structures and investing in gender-transformative approaches that centre rights, redistribute power, and enable the full participation of women, girls, and gender-diverse people in all areas of decision-making.

Key demands

• Member States must end militarisation and imperial expansion, including ongoing wars driven by major powers, and immediately redirect military expenditure towards social protection, care systems, and climate action.
• Member States must guarantee and resource feminist movements and civil society by repealing restrictive legislation, ending the use of SLAPPs and implement as well as uphold the Aarhus Convention, and ensuring safe, enabling environments for participation and accountability
• Member States must recognise and prevent ecocide, including by halting extractive and destructive practices linked to energy, infrastructure, and industrial expansion, and ensuring accountability for environmental harm across borders.
• Member States must end corporate capture of public policy by regulating private sector influence, rejecting harmful public private partnerships, and restoring democratic control over essential services such as water, energy, housing, and digital infrastructure.
• Member States must implement a just transition that is grounded in human rights, gender equality, and ecological limits, ensuring that communities are not displaced and that benefits are equitably distributed.
• Member States must move beyond GDP and adopt economic models centred on care, wellbeing, and redistribution, including through progressive taxation, public investment, and strong social protection systems.
• Member States must fulfil their financial obligations to the United Nations in full and on time, and defend multilateralism from political manipulation, ensuring that global governance remains democratic, transparent, and accountable.

 

 

SDG 5: Gender equality

Across the UNECE region, progress on gender equality is stagnating and, in several areas, reversing. According to the UNECE 2026 progress assessment, SDG 5 is improving too slowly to be achieved by 2030, with progress measurable for less than half of its targets and persistent gaps in unpaid care work, political representation, and economic equality. Women’s representation in national parliaments has declined in parts of the region, and the share of women in managerial positions is falling, particularly in senior roles, pointing to a broader rollback in decision making power (source: UNECE).

At the same time, gender based violence remains widespread, with around one in three women in the EU having experienced physical or sexual violence in adulthood (source: Eurostat). 

These trends are unfolding alongside an intensification of anti gender politics, where governments are actively dismantling equality frameworks and restricting the work of feminist and LGBTIQ movements (source: Feminists Holding the Line report). In parallel, a resurgence of pronatalist policies across parts of the region is reinforcing traditional gender roles by framing women primarily as mothers within national demographic agendas. These policies are often coupled with anti-migration narratives and militarised state building, positioning reproduction as a tool of nationalism while failing to address structural inequalities, care burdens, and economic insecurity.

Advancing SDG 5 requires Member States to confront these political and structural drivers directly. This includes reversing restrictions on civil society and ensuring sustained funding for feminist movements; adopting binding measures to redistribute unpaid care work through investment in public services and care systems; and guaranteeing equal access to resources, including land, energy, and finance. (source: Climate justice starts at the roots). It also requires rejecting policies that instrumentalise women’s bodies for demographic or economic goals, and instead ensuring that gender equality is grounded in bodily autonomy, rights, and full participation in all areas of public and economic life.

Demands

• Member States must adopt binding, gender transformative policies across all sectors, including gender responsive budgeting, disaggregated data collection, and accountability mechanisms that go beyond symbolic gender mainstreaming.
• Member States must invest in and redistribute unpaid care work through universal, publicly funded care systems and social protection, recognising care as a central pillar of economic and social policy.
• Member States must ensure equal access to and control over resources, including land, energy, and finance, and establish dedicated, accessible funding mechanisms for gender equality and climate action.
• Member States must confront and dismantle patriarchal power structures, including harmful norms and patriarchal masculinities, by embedding gender transformative approaches in education, governance, and climate and economic policy
• Member States must reject pronatalist and anti-rights policies that instrumentalise women’s bodies, and instead uphold bodily autonomy, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and full participation in public life.
• Member States must ensure predictable, long-term, and accessible funding for feminist and women’s rights organisations, including grassroots and ecofeminist movements.

 

Environmental justice

SDGs: (2) Zero Hunger, (6) Clean Water & Sanitation, (7) Affordable & Clean Energy, (13) Climate Action, (14) Life Below Water, and (15) Life On Land.

Key environmental injustices in the UNECE region are rooted in unequal control over land, water, energy, food systems, and climate finance. Women, girls, and gender diverse people continue to face exclusion from environmental decision making, while carrying disproportionate care responsibilities linked to food, water, health, and household energy use. WECF’s climate finance work shows that gender responsive climate policy remains weak where rights, representation, and resources are not redistributed in practice.

Water injustice remains a major concern. RFSD civil society interventions highlighted that water quality, affordability, and safe sanitation are regressing for many, with Roma communities, Indigenous Peoples, migrants, people experiencing homelessness, and LGBTIQ+ people facing compounded barriers to clean water, free public toilets, menstrual health products, and safe sanitation. Pollution from agriculture, fertilisers, microplastics, and untreated wastewater is degrading rivers, coasts, and drinking water, while conflict is turning water infrastructure into a target and water access into an emergency. Additionally, menstrual health and period equity must also be recognised as environmental and public health issues, particularly regarding access to safe sanitation, affordable menstrual products, and toxic-free alternatives.

Energy injustice is also deepening. Around 42 million people in Europe cannot keep their homes warm in winter (source: Right to Energy; EmpowerMed), with women disproportionately affected due to income gaps, care responsibilities, and unequal access to resources. At the same time, the renewable energy transition is reproducing extractive patterns where large scale projects displace communities, override democratic processes, and prioritise corporate interests over human rights. Expanding AI infrastructure is also increasing electricity and water demand, placing further pressure on ecosystems and communities, especially where Indigenous, rural, queer, and other marginalised communities are excluded from consent and decision making. The current trajectory of green infrastructure and energy investments, including under initiatives such as Global Gateway, risks deepening extractivism, displacement, and ecological harm while externalising environmental and social costs onto affected communities.

Food, biodiversity, and chemicals must also be treated as environmental justice issues. WECF’s 2026 submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on Climate Change and Human Rights shows that patriarchal structures shape land ownership, governance, financial systems, militarised industries, chemical exposure, informal labour, and access to justice across food systems). Chemical dependent food production, including fossil fuel intensive pesticides, fertilisers, plastics, and other toxic inputs, creates gender differentiated health harms through labour roles, household exposure, contaminated water and soil, and reproductive health risks. Environmental justice therefore requires confronting extractivism, toxic pollution, corporate power, and patriarchal control as interconnected drivers of harm. Additionally, WECF’s work on toxic-free menstruation and endocrine disrupting chemicals also highlights the gendered health impacts of everyday chemical exposure through cosmetics, plastics, menstrual products, packaging, and household items

Demands

• Member States must recognise and protect water, sanitation, and energy as human rights by ending privatisation, regulating pollution, and ensuring universal, affordable, and safe access, particularly for marginalised communities.
• Member States must implement a just transition that prevents displacement and extractivism, guarantees free, prior, and informed consent, and ensures that renewable energy systems are democratically governed and accessible to all.
• Member States must phase out toxic chemicals and fossil fuel based inputs across food and production systems, and adopt precautionary, health centred approaches that address gender differentiated exposure and impacts.
• Member States must ensure equal access to and control over land, water, and natural resources, and guarantee the full participation of women, girls, and gender diverse people in environmental governance and decision making.
• Member States must redirect public finance towards gender just climate action, including grant based climate finance and investment in community led, care centred, and regenerative environmental solutions.
• Member States must recognise and enforce the rights of nature, embedding legal frameworks that protect ecosystems as rights holders, halt environmental destruction, and prioritise restoration, stewardship, and ecological limits in all policy and investment decisions.
• Member States must regulate harmful chemicals in consumer and menstrual products and apply precautionary approaches to endocrine disrupting chemicals and toxic exposure
• Member States must integrate menstrual health, period equity, and toxic-free menstruation into public health, education, and environmental policies.

 

Social justice

SDGs: (3) Good Health & Well-being, (4) Quality Education, (11) Sustainable Cities & Communities, and (16) Peace, Justice, & Strong Institutions.

Since 2025, social injustice in the UNECE region has been shaped by militarisation, housing insecurity, shrinking civic space, and unequal access to public services. Conflict and rising military spending are destroying civilian infrastructure and diverting resources away from health, education, housing, and care. In cities, housing is increasingly treated as a financial asset rather than a human right, deepening insecurity for migrants, Roma communities, women, LGBTIQ+ people, older persons, persons with disabilities, and low income households. Sustainable mobility also remains inaccessible for many, with transport systems often failing those most dependent on public infrastructure. RFSD civil society interventions underlined that inclusive cities require rights based housing, accessible transport, disaggregated data, and meaningful participation of affected communities.

WECF further stresses that investments in care infrastructure and publicly financed social protection systems must be treated as productive public investments that strengthen resilience, inclusion, and gender equality. (see our policy recommendations on EU GAP IV)

Demands

• Member States must redirect resources from militarisation to public goods, including health, education, housing, care, and accessible infrastructure. They must recognise housing as a human right, expand public and social housing, regulate speculation and rents, and prevent displacement. They must also ensure safe, affordable, and accessible transport systems designed with women, persons with disabilities, older persons, Roma communities, migrants, and low income groups.
• Member States must guarantee comprehensive, inclusive, and stigma-free menstrual and sexual health education for all genders.

 

Economic justice

Economic injustice in the UNECE region is driven by growth centred economic models, rising living costs, energy poverty, unpaid care burdens, and the financialisation of basic needs. Women and gender diverse people are disproportionately affected by precarious work, inadequate social protection, and exclusion from economic decision making. Energy poverty remains a clear example of systemic inequality: it is rooted in poor housing, fossil fuel dependency, and unequal access to resources, with women disproportionately impacted while often excluded from energy policy design. The RFSD Beyond GDP intervention also stressed that current economic models are failing people and planet, and that wellbeing, care, social protection, rights, and ecological limits must guide economic policy.

Demands

• Member States must move beyond GDP and adopt economic models centred on care, wellbeing, redistribution, and ecological limits. They must invest in universal social protection, care systems, decent work, and gender just energy measures, while ending fossil fuel subsidies and harmful market based approaches. They must also use progressive taxation, the polluter pays principle, and public financing to redistribute resources and fund gender just climate and social action.

 

 

SDG 17: Energy justice

UNECE region

Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Moldova, North Macedonia, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan.

Donors

Our work on the 2030 Agenda is supported by Women Power 2030, a programme funded by the European Union. The contents hereon are the sole responsibility of WECF and partners and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.