The Tribunal in Defense of the Bodies and Territories of Women and Gender Diverse People, held on Thursday, November 13, 2025, in Belem, Brazil, was one of the central actions of the People’s Summit’s, thematic axis, Popular Feminism and Women’s Resistance in Territories. 

Organized by the International Women’s Initiative on Bodies and Territories, the Brazilian Women’s Alliance (AMB), the Women and Climate Change Advocacy Group (Peru), and the Global Forest Coalition (GFC), the tribunal presented nine cases from the Global South to show how the political, economic, social, safety, and climate crises impact the lives and rights of women and gender diverse people. The capitalist, extractivist, racist, and patriarchal model, in its relentless pursuit of accumulation and profit, was identified as the main cause of the ecological crisis, which constitutes a new form of colonization of territories and women’s bodies in all their diversity and sexual minorities.

The Tribunal was composed of judges Sophie Dowlar, of the World March of Women, from Kenya, Africa; Uli Arta Siagian, a climate justice activist from Indonesia, Southeast Asia; Nazely Vardanyan, of Armenian Forests, representing Central Asia/Eastern Europe; and from Latin America and the Caribbean Marisol Garcia, an indigenous leader of the Kichwa Amazonian people of Peru; and Celia Xacriabá, an indigenous leader and federal deputy from Brazil, who served as president of the Tribunal.

The cases testified by women from the Global South revealed the intersection of gender-based, geopolitical, economic, social, environmental, racial, transphobic, and climate violence in their bodies and territories, its impacts, and their resistance to an oppressive order against which they wage an articulated struggle for peaceful coexistence, without discrimination, with justice, in balance with nature, and celebrating diversity.

The cases presented before the Tribunal were:

1. That of Assalah Abu Khdeir, from Palestine, a member of the World March of Women. She denounced the genocide imposed on her people by the Zionist state of Israel, in which the greatest victims are women and children, who suffer from hunger, are deprived of healthcare, and lack the conditions necessary for their survival. She cried out for her right to live in peace, freedom, and autonomy in the face of the relentless attacks by Israel, the United States, and their allies.
2. That of Juslene Tyresias, from Haiti, a member of La Vía Campesina. She testified about the serious impacts of insecurity in her country, which has increased physical, psychological, and sexual violence, including femicides against women and girls, due to the weakness of the State, which, far from solving the problem, has facilitated the actions of criminal gangs. The effects of climate change compound this grave reality, forcing them into displacement.
3. Chaba Siny, from Western Sahara, a member of the World March of Women, demanded the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination without interference from Morocco or any other state. She denounced the repression, harassment, and prohibition against women’s political demonstrations, and how their wages are cut to silence them. She affirmed that there can be no climate justice with occupation and without territorial justice.
4. Olivia Bisa Tirko, an Indigenous leader from Peru, from the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Chapra Nation, also testified. She accused the Peruvian state of upholding corporate pacts that are destroying her country, pushing it towards ecocide and genocide, violating the rights of Indigenous peoples while women and men defending their territories and nature are murdered. She denounced that extractive activities cause irreparable damage: the loss of biodiversity, cultural identity, and multiple forms of violence against women. She questioned why 30 COPs have not halted the climate crisis and why they do not take into account women’s proposals.
5. Beku Gogti, from the Xikrin Indigenous people of Brazil, an activist with the Movement for Popular Sovereignty in Mining, revealed that the lives and health of women, particularly pregnant women, are affected by river pollution caused by mining activity by Vale. She raised her voice in protest in defense of the rights, traditional knowledge, and worldview of her people, which are increasingly threatened by the presence of this mining company.
6. Cledeneuza Bizerra, from the Quebradeiras de Côco Babacú Movement in Brazil, denounced the threats to livelihoods and food security they are facing due to the expansion of the agricultural industry. She asserted the importance of their traditional knowledge and skills and demanded the right to continue their poison-free production methods. She reminded everyone that people don’t eat money, but rather what rural women produce around the world.
7. Alejandra Laprea, from Venezuela, representing the Feminist Spider, denounced the harassment of her people by the United States and the impacts of the economic blockade imposed on the lives, health, and well-being of the population, which disproportionately harms women because they are the ones who perform care work. She stated that this entire situation has made them more vulnerable to gender-based violence and forced them to flee their country.
8. The case of Julia Chunil, a Mapuche Indigenous leader (Chile), who disappeared on November 8, 2024, after going to look for her animals in her territory, which she defended against agribusiness companies. María José Lubertino, of the Latin American and Caribbean Ecofeminist Network, denounced her case to this court and questioned how such events can occur in a democratic state, which she held responsible for failing to protect its citizens. She asked the Court for justice for Julia Chunil.
9. Melisandra, a trans woman from the Casa Cura organization in Belém do Pará, testified about the dangerous and vulnerable situation in which her community finds itself, without rights and under historical persecution of their bodies due to hatred, transphobia, and religious racism. She denounced the impunity of the Brazilian state, where the most murders of trans people occur in the world, and demanded justice for the different dimensions of their lives. She demanded that their right to participate in decision-making be made effective

Before a massive audience, the women’s testimonies revealed that neocolonialism disguises itself as investments of various kinds in the name of climate action, whose true purpose is the dispossession of Indigenous peoples and communities from their territories in order to exploit nature and continue fueling a production and consumption model that is destroying life on the planet. This occurs while states fail to act in defense of their populations and nature, thus contributing to the violation of their rights.

In this context, patriarchy amplifies its impact on the bodies of women and feminized bodies. The women testifying revealed the web of violence that, like a continuum, runs through their lives, intertwined with multiple forms of discrimination that cause pain and loss, but also indignation and awareness—the very ground where the resistance and struggles that women of the land, water, and forests are leading throughout the Global South from their collective, everyday, and organizational spaces are nurtured.

The climate crisis exacerbates violence against women and nature, and is further fueled by the increase in wars and the denialist stance of economically powerful countries interested only in expanding their influence and power. Only by changing this hegemonic model of exploitation—unjust, oppressive, and discriminatory—that attacks women and nature can we help eradicate the causes of this climate crisis, was the general sentiment in the nine cases documented.

COURT VERDICT

This court is composed of warrior women who fight and resist. They have learned from the jungle, from science, and from the land. We need to talk about a justice that is not patriarchal, colonial, or monocultural, and unlike what we see in the Global North, we are here to deliver true justice, with judges from Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

We have listened to women and gender dissidents who came to testify. They represent the diversity of being a woman, and we will deliver a verdict that will hold accountable the countries of the Global South that do not respect our nature or our bodies. We come from a process of neocolonialism by the Global North with its large corporations and projects that uproot forests with a predatory capitalism that kills children, childhoods, that destroys our territories, and sees forests as merchandise, exploiting our ecosystems.

The perpetrators are collective, and the victims are also collective, and in this verdict, we will denounce those who commit egregious human rights violations. Therefore, this tribunal declares that:

It will denounce those responsible before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, classifying the crimes against women and gender dissidents as crimes against humanity and violations of human rights and the rights of nature, since our bodies and territories must be protected by international law. Whoever kills women kills nature and kills humanity.

It demands financial justice for the struggles of women and gender dissidents, considering that we are the ones who suffer human rights violations on the front lines in our territories.

It demands economic reparations for illegal occupations, extermination, rape, destruction, and socio-environmental, cultural, and spiritual damage, taking into account the cultural perspectives of law enforcement.

It demands the recognition of a plurinational state that acknowledges the multiplicity of our social organizations and the importance of placing women and sexual and gender minorities at the center of power and decision-making. If we are the solution, we need women representatives at the United Nations, parliaments, government ministries, and at the negotiating table.

This Court will carefully consider cases from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, and more recently from Rio de Janeiro, where situations of ecocide, genocide, femicide, transfemicide, and ethnofemicide have occurred. We will listen attentively, taking into account the racial aspect, the Escazú Agreement, and the gender perspective.

This Court finds guilty those who fail to confront violence and recognizes the multiple forms of violence committed against women worldwide. There are 158 million women living in poverty, and it is necessary to have laws that punish as a crime forced displacements due to violence, the impacts of agrochemicals on our health, hatred, and the omission of States.

That is why, in a historic act, we have gathered at this COP 30, in the Paris Agreement and the Belém Charter, because it is women who vehemently and courageously defend life. A planet without women is not possible.

Bélém do Pará, November 13, 2025