COP29 Feminist Reflections: Hold the line in resistance and towards re-existence

During COP29, those white cubicles that permeated the wind along with the absence of sun and a bare minimum natural green space, were forged as the right scenario to debilitate the body and mind in between those long nights of negotiations. Yet, one thing was clear to us feminists even before we landed in Baku: this was a COP where we would #HoldTheLine.

Under this slogan, we entered this space to stop any backtracking on collective rights, gender equality and intersectionality. Advocating until the end for justice by confronting, as the Women and Gender Constituency stresses, the realities of power: who holds it, who defines it, who needs it. And as predicted, so it happened.

Feminists stood firm through hours of pushback to the progress already established in the enhanced Lima work programme on gender. We did not shy away from publicly calling on the COP29 Presidency in their absence of leadership and action to prioritise the gender negotiations, not as a stand-alone item but as a central pillar along with finance to move towards the oft-repeated – and often empty – mantra of ‘leave no one behind’.

Until the early hours of Saturday 23rd we remained vigilant, strong and united, resonating with multiple movements that categorically made it clear that no deal is better than a bad deal. Movements that stood firm to counter that colonial and imperialist narrative with which countries like the United States undermined the space. That supremacist discourse that seeks to put its position and interpretation as absolute truth, as legitimate language, as the engine of its own opulence and destruction.

They could not silence us!

Until the very last moment we raised our voice to demand responsibility and accountability for the obligations and reparations towards the historical debt owed to the South, owed to that majority of the world. 

We did not remain silent in the face of the intentional traps woven into the finance decisions that create the perfect playground for multilateral development banks and private interests. We did not shrink from firmly denouncing the threats to very existence that come from Article 6, which opens the red carpet to a mercantilist system that disguises and sells the propagation of false and dangerous distractions as actions to advance the dignified life we long for.

And equally forcefully, the censorship and repression from the institution failed to silence our transnational solidarity with Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan and so many other geographies. We called loudly for governments to stop fueling genocides ending cycles of militarisation, fossil fuels and massive extraction. We demanded transitions that break the chains of dependency that shamelessly subject the South to exploitation and destruction.

The path is now to redirect the compass and point to the South

It is no secret that trust in multilateral space is fading. Already, many conversations are calling for a reconfiguration of this space. And one thing must be made clear: this trust is largely eroded through the traps that the North has insisted on cementing.

The outcomes of COP29 are a call for urgency to transnationalise our strength. They are a call to reclaim the multilateral space by responding to movements in the streets and where governments move forward with coherence and without negligence.

Inspiration can be found in the collective work among Palestinian and Colombian trade union movements against the genocide in Gaza demanding the halting of Colombian coal exports to Israel. Noting that Colombia was the largest coal exporter to Israel, the announcement of an energy embargo is a result of the power of transnational organising and mobilising and a clear political step to halt the machinery of murder, of a deadly ecocide. 

It is from experiences like this that we must articulate ourselves to be a strong counterbalance. It is from moments like these that it becomes more urgent and necessary to nourish each other’s efforts and complement our demands. Holding strongly to our agency as movements, advocates, artists, workers, caregivers. Remembering in our skin, our imaginaries, and our struggle the pathway that our ancestors have forged for generations to emerge and intertwine collectively towards el buen vivir. 

The strength remains in those who do not let silence drown them; in those who do not hide in condescension; in those who fearlessly look imperialism in the eye. From there we recognise ourselves, our movements, our allies.  

The call now is to redirect out tactics and compass pointing to the South as the horizon – as that star that guides and relocates us towards resistance and re-existence. The pathway is to forge the power of the Majority of the World resetting a radical blueprint towards New International Economic Order undoing the normalisation of neoliberal and colonial logics, and delinking in parallel white supremacist knowledge systems and capitalist structures. 

gina cortés valderrama is a Colombian activist who advocates for climate, economic and gender justice at the intersections of feminism, decoloniality and degrowth. She serves as one of the Co-Focal Points of the Women and Gender Constituency (WGC) of the UNFCCC and co-leads the Just Transition Thematic Group. She is also part of the collective of Colombian migrants in Germany, Aluna Minga.