ESCR-NET INTERNATIONAL

The Organization seeks to build a global movement to make human rights and social justice a reality for all.1. Led by grassroots women leaders and social movements, members elevated red-line issues a gender-responsive approach, Indigenous Peoples rights, corporate capture, conflict, human rights defenders ensuring that negotiations for the UN Human Rights Council treaty on business and human rights addressed the rights of affected communities and their demands for justice. Several States ultimately referenced specific points from ESCR-Nets collective position.2. Fortifying a human rights-based approach to data, the Monitoring Working Group developed draft principles of good data focused on issues of representativeness, participation, accessibility, security and privacy, and relevance to ESCR. Collective advocacy amplified these principles with UN treaty bodies and the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, elevating the experience , analysis, and participation of affected communities in decision-making processes. 3. Advocacy actions and workshops, co-organized with the Endorois Welfare Council and fellow members over several years, have supported the growing leadership of Endorois women in advancing implementation of the African Commission decision calling for land restitution. In May 2019, three Endorois women were elected to the Board of the Endorois Welfare Council, demonstrating how womens participation in land struggles can strengthen substantive equality, transforming the movement itself. 4. Building on the depth and diversity of many members advocacy at the intersection of human rights and climate change, ESCR-Net officially launched a network-wide project on ESCR and the environment, prioritizing climate justice. Members centered climate issues in diverse cross-network initiatives and played a key role on the task force for the Peoples Summit on Climate, Rights and Human Survival in New York City. 5. ESCR-Net members around the world mobilized in solidarity with fellow human rights defenders and allies, including in Sierra Leone, Brazil, and Colombia, carrying out advocacy actions and sending collective letters to denounce repression, violence, and impunity rooted in corporate abuses and capture of governmental decision-making and institutions. 6. Organized women workers and grassroots groups mobilized an online May Day campaign, utilizing a mass Twitter action, collective statement, and related advocacy actions to amplify their calls for States to adopt, ratify, and implement the International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention to eliminate violence and harassment in the world of work. ILO Convention 190 and Recommendation 206 were adopted in June 2019. 7. At an economic policy workshop in Chiapas, ESCR-Net members half of whom were social movements advanced shared analysis of systemic injustices, including climate change and corporate capture, that is propelling advocacy for alternatives to the dominant model of development and informing popular political education grounded in movement-led analysis and human rights. 8. Grassroots labor leaders used a security and protection workshop at the Women and Work strategy meeting in Mexico to advance community-led strategies for preventing threats and addressing attacks specific to women human rights defenders in the context of work. 9. Members submitted a collective amicus brief before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) in an indigenous rights case in Argentina (Lhaka Honhat vs. Argentina), focusing on free, prior and informed consent, as well as the rights to water, food, cultural identity, and a healthy environment, contributing to a precedent-setting decision recognizing these rights. 10. Women from different regions and land struggles built a collective position on land, corporate capture, and climate change at an intergenerational exchange for grassroots women leaders in Chiang Mai. Leaders presented this analysis at the Day of General Discussion on the UN Committee on ESCR draft General Comment on land, where it resonated powerfully. 11. Litigators, advocates, campaigners and movement leaders joined forces at a strategic litigation workshop in Mongolia, strengthening argumentation in individual cases focused on the environment and corporate actors, situating litigation in wider advocacy strategies for structural change, and cultivating member-to-member collaborations.