Read the press release here.

We held an action, in the form of a human pyramid, as a reminder to all the decision-makers walking the corridors of the UNFCCC headquarters in Bonn during SB48 (the conference happening in between the climate negotiations, COPs) of the commitments they made toward human rights in Paris, 2015.

At the moment, decision-makers, civil society organisations and other stakeholders are in Bonn to negotiate how member states should implement the Paris Agreement. So far 195 members to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have signed the Agreement. The Work Programme (also called “the Paris Rulebook”), currently up for negotiations, will guide countries on said implementation and decision-makers are hoping to finalise it at COP24 in December later this year. A key component of the Paris Agreement, was the acknowledgement of human rights in the preamble. While the preamble sets the tone of the commitments under the Agreement, it is not automatically legally binding if it is not mainstreamed throughout the operative parts. That’s why it is very important that decision-makers mainstream the human rights references of the preamble into the Paris Rulebook.

As such we hosted an action, on behalf of the Women & Gender Constituency and Human Rights & Climate Change Working Group, at the UNFCCC headquarters, forming a human pyramid. Each person of the pyramid represented one of the following human rights elements: human rights, public participation, indigenous people’s rights, just transition, gender, food security, ecosystem integrity and protection of biodiversity, and intergenerational equity. If you leave one of these out, the Paris Rulebook will crumble! We need them all, to ensure that the Rulebook is as effective as possible! People need to be at the center of climate action, you cannot produce effective policies about us, without us!

The action was coordinated by our Hanna Gunnarsson, on behalf of the Women & Gender Constituency and the Human Rights and Climate Change Working Group.