Women’s Human Rights to Water, Food and a Healthy Environment

The document highlights how large-scale development projects like dams and mines negatively impact women, who often face displacement to marginal lands, loss of resource access, and exclusion from decision-making. While international legal instruments protect the rights to water, food, and a healthy environment, the briefing notes a failure in implementation, particularly in resource-dependent countries with weak governance. It calls for integrated governmental approaches, gender-sensitive corporate due diligence, and capacity building for women to seek legal redress. Case studies from South Africa, Kenya, and India demonstrate that legal training and empowerment can enable women to successfully challenge mining companies and secure land titles.

• Large-scale development projects, including mines, dams, and land conversion, disproportionately harm women by forcing them onto less productive land, increasing the distance they must travel for water and fuel, and excluding them from land compensation negotiations, which are typically conducted with male heads of households.
• Despite the existence of international legal instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, there is a significant gap in translating these rights into binding national laws, especially in states that rely on natural resource exports and have weak governance.
• Women face substantial barriers when seeking justice for human rights violations, including unclear rights, financial burdens, inadmissibility rulings, and the challenge of facing corporate legal teams in extraterritorial claims. Additionally, human rights defenders face increasing risks of harassment, violent attacks, and assassination.
• Empowerment and legal training for women in mining-affected communities have led to tangible results: in South Africa, women filed legal claims against mining companies; in Kenya, the Ngaaie community halted operations by Athi River Mining (ARM) Limited through legal action; and in India, training helped 120 single women obtain land titles in 2017 and halted planned evictions in a Tiger Reserve area.

APA

Center for International Environmental Law (2017). Women’s Human Rights to Water, Food and a Healthy Environment. https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Womens-Human-Rights-to-Water-Food-and-a-Healthy-Environment.pdf

Chicago

Center for International Environmental Law. Women’s Human Rights to Water, Food and a Healthy Environment. 2017. https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Womens-Human-Rights-to-Water-Food-and-a-Healthy-Environment.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Center for International Environmental Law |title=Women’s Human Rights to Water, Food and a Healthy Environment |date=2017 |url=https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Womens-Human-Rights-to-Water-Food-and-a-Healthy-Environment.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{centerforinternationalenvironmentallaw2017womens, author = {{Center for International Environmental Law}}, title = {{Women’s Human Rights to Water, Food and a Healthy Environment}}, institution = {Center for International Environmental Law}, year = {2017}, url = {https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Womens-Human-Rights-to-Water-Food-and-a-Healthy-Environment.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }