September, 03 2020, 12:00am EDT
Over 100 Organizations Call on Biden To Adopt a New Good Neighbor Policy Towards Latin America
Over 100 organizations that work on issues related to Latin America and the Caribbean sent a letter to Democratic nominee Joe Biden and President Donald Trump calling for the next administration to adopt a new Good Neighbor Policy toward the region based on non-intervention, cooperation and mutual respect. Current policies punish innocent civilians through harsh economic sanctions, destabilize the region through coups and attempts at regime change, and are a significant factor in driving migration northwards. Among the organizations calling for a new approach are Alianza Americas, Amazon Wa
WASHINGTON
Over 100 organizations that work on issues related to Latin America and the Caribbean sent a letter to Democratic nominee Joe Biden and President Donald Trump calling for the next administration to adopt a new Good Neighbor Policy toward the region based on non-intervention, cooperation and mutual respect. Current policies punish innocent civilians through harsh economic sanctions, destabilize the region through coups and attempts at regime change, and are a significant factor in driving migration northwards. Among the organizations calling for a new approach are Alianza Americas, Amazon Watch, the Americas Program, Center for International Policy, CODEPINK, Demand Progress, Global Exchange, the Latin America Working Group and Oxfam America.
The letter to the presidential candidates warns that in "January 2021, the President of the United States will face a hemisphere that will not only still be reeling from the coronavirus but will also likely be experiencing a deep economic recession." The letter calls for the next administration to follow a new Good Neighbor Policy and proposes that "the best way for the United States to help is not by seeking to impose its will, but rather by engaging with the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean as equal partners."
"The Trump administration openly calls its Latin America and Caribbean policy the 'Monroe Doctrine 2.0', and the Democratic Party hasn't been much better. Its platform calls the entire Western Hemisphere 'America's strategic home base.' The countries and peoples of the Caribbean and Latin America aren't anyone's backyard or home base, they are sovereign and want their relations with Washington to be based on non-intervention, mutual respect and cooperation for the common good," said Leonardo Flores, Latin America Campaign Coordinator for CODEPINK. "If the U.S. government applied these principles, it would end the broad sanctions that punish innocent civilians in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, and instead resolve its differences with these countries through diplomacy and multilateralism."
In addition to calling for an end to stifling economic sanctions, the organizations also call for ending U.S. arms sales and militarization of the region, ending political interference in elections and domestic affairs, supporting the human rights of all peoples, and implementing a humane immigration policy and fairer economic policies.
The letter to candidate Biden and full list of endorsing organizations can be accessed at this link and is included below. An identical letter to President Trump is available here.
Dear Vice President Biden,
As organizations that care about United States policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean, we write to urge you to adopt a broad set of reforms to reframe relations with our neighbors to the south.
Shortly after meeting with President Raul Castro of Cuba in April of 2015, President Obama stated that "the days in which our agenda in this hemisphere so often presumed that the United States could meddle with impunity, those days are past." Two years prior to that, his Secretary of State, John Kerry, had earned praise throughout the region after announcing that the "era of the Monroe Doctrine is over." To many, it appeared that the U.S. government was reviving the "Good Neighbor" regional policy of respect for Latin American and Caribbean self-determination and human rights that had been announced under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and then quickly abandoned during the Cold War.
The Monroe Doctrine - asserting U.S. geopolitical control over the region - served as a pretext for over 100 years of military invasions, support for military dictatorships, the financing of security forces involved in mass human rights violations, economic blackmail, and support for coups against democratically elected governments, among other horrors that have caused many Latin Americans and Caribbeans to flee north in search of safety and opportunity.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt distanced himself from this doctrine, outlining a new vision for relations in the hemisphere. His "Good Neighbor" policy temporarily ended the gunboat diplomacy that characterized U.S. foreign policy in the late 19th and early 20thcenturies. Although the policy had its flaws, such as FDR's support for the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, his administration's failures were often the result of not following the Good Neighbor principle of non-interference.
In January 2021, the President of the United States will face a hemisphere that will not only still be reeling from the coronavirus but will also likely be experiencing a deep economic recession. The best way for the United States to help is not by seeking to impose its will, but rather by engaging with the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean as equal partners.
We hope that your administration will adopt a New Good Neighbor Policy and commit to the following:
Ending broad economic sanctions
The embargo against Cuba has been a 60-year disaster that has caused countless deaths, cost the Cuban economy billions of dollars, shut U.S. businesses out of an important market, and contributed to deep antipathy towards the US throughout the region and much of the world. More recent sanctions regimes against Venezuela and Nicaragua are also causing widespread human suffering. Furthermore, U.S. sanctions violate the Charter of the Organization of American States, the United Nations Charter, and international human rights law. They target the civilian population and therefore would violate both the Hague and Geneva Conventions -- to which the US is a signatory -- if they were committed during a war. We call on you to end unilateral U.S. sanctions imposed through past presidential orders and to work with Congress to repeal the Helms-Burton Act, which imposes unilateral economic sanctions against Cuba. The United States should resolve its policy differences through diplomacy, multilateralism and engagement.
Militarization policy
Though the Cold War ended decades ago, the U.S. continues to provide and export hundreds of millions of dollars of police and military equipment and training to Latin American and Caribbean countries each year. In many cases, such as Honduras and Colombia, U.S. funding and training have supported troops involved in corruption and egregious human rights abuses, including numerous extrajudicial killings and attacks targeting local activists and journalists. Much of this aid and weapons exports, which have accompanied the increased militarization of law enforcement, are transferred in the name of the decades-long war on drugs, which the vast majority of the U.S. public has long believed to be a failure. Rather than abating drug trafficking and violence, this approach incentivizes drug trafficking and fuels a vicious cycle of violence. Often US-backed forces are themselves involved in drug trafficking and defend the interests of big landowners and corporations, while violently repressing land rights activists. There is no justification for U.S. security programs in the region. No national security threat exists and a "war on drugs" is a counterproductive way to deal with a US public health issue that is best addressed through decriminalization and equitable legal regulation. It is time to scale down US "security assistance" and arms sales and remove US military and law enforcement personnel from the region.
Ending political interference
The US government has a long, troubling history of interfering in the internal politics of countries of the region. It has frequently carried out military invasions to impose or remove political leaders and it has supported rightwing military coups that have invariably resulted in violent repression. In the name of "democracy promotion," the US government has trained and funded political groups that it favors while supporting public relations campaigns to try to marginalize the political forces that it opposes. Time and time again, the US has sought to shape the outcome of elections to favor its perceived interests. Here at home, we rightly condemn any sort of foreign interference in our own country's domestic politics and elections, so how can we continue to engage in gross interference in the politics of our neighbors? It is time for the US to respect the political sovereignty of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Any major political crises that emerge in the region should be dealt with through multilateral engagements, not unilateral actions.
Supporting the human rights of all peoples
The US has an important role to play in advocating for human rights across the hemisphere, a role that can only be strengthened by ensuring that the US government does not violate human rights in its own territory, on its borders or overseas. Special attention should be paid at home and abroad to the rights of historically excluded communities, including indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, LGBTQ+ individuals, women, and migrants and refugees. The United States should speak out when human rights defenders, including environmental and land rights activists and labor organizers, are in danger--a situation all too frequent in Latin America and the Caribbean today. For the US to credibly speak about rights, it should sign and ratify international treaties including, but not limited to, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the American Convention on Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as well as other covenants relating to racial discrimination, women, children, persons with disabilities, migrants, and torture. Furthermore, the US should work towards depoliticizing and strengthening existing multilateral institutions that defend human rights, and the US must ensure that it does not instrumentalize rights for political gain - too often, human rights violations in the US or in allied countries are ignored, while violations in countries considered adversaries are magnified.
Immigration
The next administration must undo the brutal harms of the 2016-2020 Trump administration and must understand how past U.S. economic, security and environmental policies have fueled mass migration. It must also reject the status quo of the Obama administration, which deported more people than any administration ever before and built the infrastructure for the Trump administration to carry out violent anti-immigrant policies. These include an increase in border militarization, growth in the privatized immigration detention system, an increase in DHS information-sharing programs like Secure Communities, more ICE partnerships with local police, and an increase in ICE raids, among others. The next administration must hear the demands for immigrant justice, and implement the following measures: enact a day-one moratorium on all deportations; end mass prosecutions of individuals who cross the border; re-establish asylum procedures at the border; provide an immediate path to citizenship for the Dreamers and for Temporary Protected Status holders; terminate the Muslim Ban; rescind funding for the border wall; rescind the myriad abusive Trump administration's regulatory changes that have denied basic rights to immigrants; rescind the "zero-tolerance" (family separation) policy and other policies that prioritize migration-related prosecutions; reallocate resources away from immigration enforcement agencies and towards community-based alternatives to detention programs; and end private immigration detention.
Trade policy
The US government has engaged in a variety of economic interventions in the region in order to promote a neoliberal economic agenda that benefits transnational capital and local elites while generating greater inequality, environmental destruction and living conditions for ordinary citizens. The US intervenes in domestic economic policymaking in countries in large part through its enormous influence within multilateral financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Bank. In order to obtain credit lines from these organizations, governments typically have to agree to austerity measures and other policies that lead to the downsizing of welfare states and a weakening of workers' bargaining power. In addition, the trade agreements that Washington promotes in the region have invariably led to the deregulation of financial markets and the strengthening of foreign investor protections, which prioritize the "rights" of corporations over peoples' rights. As such, the US should end the undue power given to corporate interests to exploit other countries economically through investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions found in trade and investment agreements, which allow corporations to sue countries in supranational tribunal over public interest and environmental regulations that affect their expected profits. To help the region develop, the US needs to allow countries to choose their own paths, instead of supporting external institutions that claim to support development while actually serving the interests of corporations and global finance. Further, it must be ensured that US foreign assistance supports public health and education services by channeling funding primarily to NGOs that take on these services in coordination with local and state entities and priorities, as well as in consultation with local and affected communities.
*****
The principles of non-intervention and non-interference, mutual respect, acceptance of our differences, and working together for the common good could form the foundation of a New Good Neighbor policy that would allow the U.S. to restore peace and make a positive contribution to the well-being of people throughout the hemisphere.
Sincerely,
- ActionAid USA
- African Services Committee
- Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice
- Albany Cuba Solidarity
- Alianza Americas
- Alliance for Cuba Engagement and Respect (ACERE)
- Alliance for Global Justice
- Altruvistas
- Amazon Watch
- American Friends Service Committee
- Americas Program
- Arts & Cultural Bridge Foundation
- Bolivarian Circle ALberto Lovera New York
- Building Relations with Cuban Labor
- Casa Baltimore Limay
- Center for Common Ground
- Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law
- Center for International Policy
- Central American Resource Center - DC
- Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America
- CODEPINK
- Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES)
- Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS)
- Community EsTr(El/La)
- Corvallis (OR) Latin America Solidarity Committee
- Council on Hemispheric Affairs
- Ecumenical Peace Institute/Clergy and Laity Concerned (CALC)
- Florida Alliance for Peace and Justice
- Friends Committee on National Legislation
- Friends of Latin America
- Garifuna Community Services INC
- Global Exchange
- Global Health Partners
- Grassroots Global Justice
- Haiti Action Committee
- Hands Off Venezuela
- Honduras Solidarity Network
- Hunts Point Community Partnership
- IFCO/Pastors for Peace
- Institute for Policy Studies, Global Economy, New Internationalism, and Drug Policy Programs
- Institute for Women in Migration (IMUMI)
- International Committee for Peace, Justice, and Dignity
- Jewish Voice for Peace Portland
- July 26th Coalition of Boston
- Just Foreign Policy
- Labor Community Alliance of South Florida
- Latin America Task Force of Interfaith Council for Peace & Justice
- Latin America Working Group (LAWG)
- Latino Commission on AIDS
- LELO/A Legacy of Equality, Leadership and Organizing
- LIFT-NY
- MADRE
- Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
- Massachusetts Peace Action
- National Lawyers Guild International Committee
- National Network on Cuba
- Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA)
- New Sanctuary Coalition
- Nicaragua Center for Community Action
- Nicaraguan Cultural Alliance
- Nonviolence International
- North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)
- Oregon PeaceWorks
- Our Developing World
- Oxfam America
- Peace Action
- PeaceHost.net
- People Demanding Action
- PopularResistance.org
- Portland Central America Solidarity Committee (PCASC)
- Progressive Democrats of America
- ProximityCuba
- RootsAction.org
- Sanctuary DMV
- Seattle Cuba Friendship Committee
- SHARE Foundation
- Sister Parish, Inc.
- Sisters of Mercy of the Americas - Justice Team
- Solidarity Committee On The Americas (SCOTA)
- South Texas Human Rights Center
- Task Force on the Americas
- The Cross Border Network
- The Feminist Foreign Policy Project
- The Friendship Association
- U.S. Labor Against the War
- Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
- United Church of Christ, Justice and Witness Ministries
- United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 1445
- United for Peace and Justice
- US Network for Democracy in Brazil
- US Peace Council
- US Women and Cuba Collaboration
- US-El Salvador Sister Cities
- USF Immigration & Deportation Defense Clinic
- Veterans For Peace, #136
- Whatcom Peace & Justice Center
- Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective
- Women Against Military Madness
- Women's International League for Peace and Freedom US
- World Beyond War
Keep reading...Show less
CODEPINK is a women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism, support peace and human rights initiatives, and redirect our tax dollars into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming programs.
(818) 275-7232LATEST NEWS
'There Was No Imminent Threat,' Says Sen. Chris Murphy After Iran Intelligence Briefing
The Connecticut Democrat blasted Donald Trump as "a weak and dangerously reckless president."
Jun 23, 2025
In addition to pushing back against U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson's claim that President Donald Trump "made the right call" attacking Iran's nuclear sites, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy on Monday spelled out "ideas that should guide Americans' thinking as they digest the hourly news updates during the early days of what may become yet another American war of choice in the Middle East."
Johnson (R-La.) claimed in a Saturday night post on the social media site X that "leaders in Congress were aware of the urgency of this situation and the commander-in-chief evaluated that the imminent danger outweighed the time it would take for Congress to act."
Responding early Monday, Murphy (D-Conn.) said that "there was no imminent threat. I got briefed on the same intelligence as the speaker."
"This is also a moment for the American people to stand up and say we do not want another war in the Middle East."
That echoed a statement the senator put out on Sunday, in which he said that "I've been briefed on the intelligence—there is no evidence Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States. That makes this attack illegal."
"Only Congress can declare preemptive war, and we should vote as soon as possible on legislation to explicitly deny President Trump the authorization to drag us into a conflict in Middle East that could get countless Americans killed and waste trillions of dollars," he added, calling Trump "a weak and dangerously reckless president."
Murphy—a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations—also published a long piece on his Senate website on Monday, stressing eight key points:
- There is an industry in Washington that profits from war, and so it's no surprise that the merits of conflict are dangerously overhyped and the risks are regularly underestimated.
- Almost every war plan our military has devised for the Middle East and North Africa in the last two decades has been a failure.
- The strikes are illegal, and a major setback for the international rule of law that has undergirded American security for 75 years.
- You cannot bomb knowledge out of existence. Iran knows how to make a nuclear bomb.
- We didn't need to start a war with Iran because we know—for sure—that diplomacy can work.
- Even opponents of this strike need to admit Iran is weak, and we cannot know for sure what the future holds.
- There are many very, very bad potential consequences of Trump's attack. The worst consequence, of course, is a full-blown war in the region that draws in the United States.
- Israel is our ally and Iran IS a threat to their people, but we should never allow Israeli domestic politics to draw us into a war.
"This is a moment where Congress needs to step in," Murphy argued. "This week, we are likely to take a vote that makes it crystal clear President Trump does not have the authorization for these strikes or a broader war with Iran."
"This is also a moment for the American people to stand up and say we do not want another war in the Middle East," he added, recalling the U.S. invasion of Iraq. "In the last 20 years, we have seen the untold damage done—the lives lost, the billions of dollars wasted, and our reputation squandered—and we won't allow Trump to take us down that path again."
After Tehran on Monday responded to Trump's attack by firing missiles at a base in Qatar that houses American forces and, reportedly, a site in Iraq, the U.S. president announced on his Truth Social network a cease-fire between Iran and Israel—which was bombing its Middle East opponent before the United States started also doing so.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Strikes on Iran Nuclear Sites Called 'Devastating Blow' to Nonproliferation
"It's such a terrible precedent that could drive states to determine that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty no longer benefits their security," one expert warned during a virtual event on the conflict.
Jun 23, 2025
Experts said Monday during a webinar on the escalating Mideast crisis that U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran's civilian nuclear facilities—which were ostensibly under International Atomic Energy Agency protection—further exposed the United States as untrustworthy and severely damaged efforts to stop the global proliferation of nuclear weapons.
ReThink Media hosted Monday's webinar, during which host Mac Hamilton discussed issues including Saturday's U.S. attack on Iran with panelists Sara Haghdoosti, the executive director of Win Without War; Yasmine Taeb, the legislative political director at MPower Change; Kelsey Davenport, Arms Control Association's director for nonproliferation policy; and Arti Walker-Peddakotla, chair of the board at About Face: Veterans Against the War.
"Military action is not an effective long-term strategy for preventing a nuclear-armed Iran."
President Donald Trump ordered the attacks on the Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant, the Natanz Nuclear Facility, and the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center despite decades of U.S. intelligence community consensus—including his own administration's recent assessment—that Iran is not trying to develop nuclear weapons. Trump also disregarded international law, his own two-week ultimatum for Iran, and the fact that the three facilities were supposed to be safeguarded by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
"From a nonproliferation perspective, Trump's decision to strike Iran was a reckless, irresponsible escalation that is likely to push Iran closer to nuclear weapons in the long term," Davenport said during Monday's webinar. "The strikes did damage key Iranian nuclear facilities, like the underground Fordow enrichment site. But Tehran had ample time prior to the strikes to remove its stockpile of near-weapons-grade uranium to a covert location, and it's likely that they did so."
"This underscores that the strikes may have temporarily set back Iran's program, but military action is not an effective long-term strategy for preventing a nuclear-armed Iran," she continued. "Because technically, Iran has retained its nuclear weapons capability and critical aspects of the program."
"And politically, there's greater impetus now to weaponize," Davenport contended. "I mean, strikes are already strengthening factions in Iran calling for withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and strengthening arguments that nuclear weapons are necessary to deter further attacks."
Rejecting the president's claim to have "completely and totally obliterated" Iran's nuclear sites, Davenport said that "all Trump has destroyed is U.S. credibility, I think Iranians have less reason now to trust the United States to negotiate an agreement in good faith."
Davenport continued:
Iran has certainly learned the lessons of past history. I mean, [former Libyan Prime Minister] Moammar Gadhafigave up Libya's nuclear weapons program, and later was overthrown by Western-backed forces. Syria, its nuclear weapons program was bombed while it was still in its infancy. Decades later, [former Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad was overthrown.
The United States has demonstrated it is not interested in credible negotiations under the Trump administration, and that if a deal is struck there's no guarantee that the United States will abide by its commitments, even if Iran is abiding by its end of the bargain. That's what we saw in the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] scenario. So it really raises questions about U.S. nonproliferation policy going forward, and the risk of erosion, you know, to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.
In 2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal, despite his own administration's assessment that Tehran was in full compliance with the agreement. Critics argued Trump's move was meant to satisfy Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has boasted about being able to control U.S. policy and whose country has an undeclared nuclear arsenal and is not a party to the NPT.
Davenport highlighted the "uptick in conversation" in Tehran about quitting the NPT, given that "the treaty cannot preserve and protect civil nuclear activities."
"I think it is worth underscoring that the United States struck sites that were under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. These were not covert enrichment facilities," she stressed. "These were not sites where Iran was dashing to the bomb. You know, there's no evidence of that. These were safeguarded facilities that the IAEA regularly has access to."
"This is a devastating blow to the nonproliferation regime," Davenport said. "And I think over time, this is going to contribute to erosion of the treaty. It's such a terrible precedent that could drive states to determine that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty no longer benefits their security, that their civil programs can become targets without any evidence of weaponization, and drive further questioning of whether remaining in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is in their interest."
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi—who last week said there was no proof Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb—also warned during a Monday meeting of the body's board of governors in Vienna that "the weight of this conflict risks collapsing the global nuclear nonproliferation regime."
"But there is still a path for diplomacy," Grossi said. "We must take it, otherwise violence and destruction could reach unimaginable levels and the global nonproliferation regime that has underpinned international security for more than half a century could crumble and fall."
"Iran, Israel, and the Middle East need peace," he emphasized. "Armed attacks on nuclear facilities should never take place and could result in boradioactive releases with grave consequences within and beyond the boundaries of the state which has been attacked. I therefore again call on maximum restraint. Military escalation not only threatens lives, it also delays us from taking the diplomatic path."
"To achieve the long-term assurance that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon and for the continued effectiveness of the global nonproliferation regime, we must return to negotiations," Grossi added.
Iranian officials and other observers have accused Grossi and the IAEA of complicity in U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran. Last week, Iran filed a complaint against the agency's chief for allegedly "undermining the agency's impartiality."
This, following last week's IAEA board of governors approval of a resolution stating that Iran is not complying with its obligations as a member of the body, a finding based largely on dubious intelligence that skeptics compared to the "weapons of mass destruction" lies in the lead-up to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
In an opinion piece published Monday by Common Dreams, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies of the peace group CodePink wrote that the U.S. and Israel "used Grossi" to "hijack the IAEA and start a war on Iran."
"Rafael Grossi should resign as IAEA director before he further undermines nuclear nonproliferation and drags the world any closer to nuclear war," Benjamin and Davies added.
On Monday, the Majlis, Iran's Parliament, began weighing legislation to suspend cooperation with the IAEA.
"The world clearly saw that the IAEA has failed to uphold its commitments and has become a political instrument," Majlis Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said on the chamber floor Monday.
Qalibaf added that Iran would "will definitely respond in a way that will make gambler Trump regret" attacking Iran.
Later Monday, Iran fired a salvo of missiles at a military base housing U.S. troops in Qatar and, reportedly, at an American facility in Iraq. There have been no reported casualties or strike damage.
This was followed by Trump's announcement on social media of a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Iran.
Keep ReadingShow Less
As Extreme Heat Bakes US, 160+ Global Groups Demand 'Real' Climate Action
"Reject false solutions, such as natural gas, mega-dams, geoengineering, bioenergy, forest offsets, carbon trading schemes, nuclear energy, biodiversity credits, and carbon capture and storage."
Jun 23, 2025
As about 265 million people across the United States face advisories for this week's "climate change-driven heatwave," over 160 groups from 45 countries on Monday collectively called for "real" and urgent action to "keep global warming below 1.5ºC to preserve a healthy and livable planet for ourselves and future generations."
The "call to action" was released as United Nations climate meetings are wrapping up in Bonn, Germany, and in anticipation of the next U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP30), set to be held in Belém, Brazil in November.
The joint call was published on the first day of the virtual Global Women's Assembly for Climate Justice: Path to COP30 and Beyond, organized by the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International.
"For too long, science-based climate solutions have been sacrificed on the altar of capitalism."
"The climate crisis is not just an environmental crisis—it is a crisis of justice, of society, and of humanity itself. How we respond, and who is centered in that response, matters profoundly," said WECAN founder and executive director Osprey Orielle Lake in a statement. "We are calling for systemic transformation—one that delivers climate, social, and economic justice for all generations."
"While governments and corporations push us deeper into climate chaos, movements around the world are rising," she noted. "From every corner of the Earth, women leaders are coming together with solutions and strategies to defend our planet and our communities. We call on governments and financial institutions to heed their voices and ensure effective and equitable policies—from Bonn to Belém and beyond. We must rise boldly, because climate change is not waiting for politics. Our movements are not bending. We are not breaking. We are defining and building a healthy and just future for all."
The new call to action points out that "last year, the world breached this threshold with global average temperatures exceeding 1.5ºC above preindustrial levels. This alarming milestone is not yet a permanent breach of the Paris agreement guardrail, which refers to long-term warming, although scientists predict that 2024 will be the first of a 20-year period reaching 1.5ºC warming."
"Although the pathway is drastically narrowing, the International Energy Agency affirms that the goal of the Paris agreement is still attainable," the publication continues. "Scientists assert that limiting global warming to 1.5ºC will require significant and urgent action from governments and financial institutions."
Specifically, the coalition outlined 10 broad actions for governments and financial institutions, beginning with urging both the public and private sectors to end fossil fuel expansion and extraction, and to "reject false solutions, such as natural gas, mega-dams, geoengineering, bioenergy, forest offsets, carbon trading schemes, nuclear energy, biodiversity credits, and carbon capture and storage."
The collective also called for accelerating a just transition, promoting women's leadership and gender equity, protecting the rights of Indigenous peoples, safeguarding forests and biodiversity, preserving oceans and freshwater, advancing food security and sovereignty, implementing the Rights of Nature, providing robust climate finance, and cutting off financial institutions' support for "harmful projects and redirecting resources into climate solutions."
STARTING SOON! The first day of the Global Women's Assembly for Climate Justice: Path to COP30 and Beyond is kicking off today at 1:00 PM EDT! Join us via Zoom for interpretation and chat moderation or be welcome to watch live on Facebook and Youtube! tinyurl.com/CJ-2025
[image or embed]
— WECAN International (@wecan-intl.bsky.social) June 23, 2025 at 11:49 AM
In addition to WECAN, signatories include Amazon Watch, Journalists for Human Rights, MADRE, MoveOn.org, Public Citizen, Rainforest Action Network, Turtle Island Restoration Network, Urgewald, and over 100 other organizations.
"For too long, science-based climate solutions have been sacrificed on the altar of capitalism," said Zukiswa White, a project specialist and social justice consultant, and speaker at the WECAN assembly. "Corporations, financial institutions, and governments have criminalized and penalized those fighting to defend life, protect the integrity of the planet, and fight for climate action. All this, while the wealthy elite profit off of extracting and burning our planet's resources."
"If we are to prevent the worst of climate change—a crisis that is already impacting most people on the planet—we demand that we insist on a different path," White continued. "Choosing to keep the status quo is neither a coincidence nor is it our inevitable destiny. Rather, it is a political choice. So too is upholding systems that violate planetary boundaries. To counter this, we must center the work of frontline leaders and experts around the world—move into implementation of policies that not only halt climate devastation, but also champion democratic, gender transformative, and community-based solutions."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular