Gender Caucus: Enhancing women herders and pastoralists' contribution to stewardship and resilience - UNCCD COP17

Opening, if we could call, I want to call our goodwill ambassador, Baba Mal, to welcome us before the opening.

Baba Mal is our goodwill ambassador for the UNCCD, and he's here.

He want to warmly welcome you. Baba, you have the floor or you have the voice.

Thank you.

That.

I call to order the 11th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification at its 17th session. Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to warmly welcome all participants to this gender caucus held under the theme enhancing women herders and pastoralists contribution to stewardship and resilience is held. This gender caucus is organized in accordance with decision 36 of COP16 and recognize that COP15 through decision 24/COP15 and will focus on recognizing and strengthening the role of women herders and pastoralists as key stewards of rangelands, biodiversity and resilient rural livelihoods. Excellencies, Executive Secretary of the UNCCD, Yasmine Fouad, former President of Finland, Taria Karina Halonen distinguished delegates ladies and gentlemen today's Gathering brings together key stakeholders to advance gender equality and women's empowerment under the unccd women are among those most affected by land degradation and drought while at the same time playing a vital role and sustainable land management, agriculture, biodiversity conversation, conservation, and rural livelihoods. Therefore, gender considerations must remain an integral part of UNCCD discussions and decisions on land restoration, drought resilience, and sustainable development. I am pleased to see strong participation in this hall as we review challenges, exchange experiences, and identify practical solutions to strengthen women's leadership and participation in addressing desertification and land degradation. By supporting women's contributions and providing the necessary opportunities for incentives and incentives, we can advance the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and the achievement of sustainable development goal five. Distinguished delegates, promoting gender equality is an important priority of Mongolia's foreign policy. Mongolia has actively hosted international initiatives, including the World Women's Forum, which adopted the Ulaanbaatar Declaration towards a sustainable future and the first ever meeting of female foreign ministers in 2023. The Women's Entrepreneurs Forum in 2025 further reinforced women's leadership and contribution to sustainable development and the achievements of the SDGs. building on this momentum the International Year of Rangeland and pastoral elites 2026 offers an important opportunity to further promote women's leadership and empowerment in pastoral and rural communities recognizing their vital contributions to sustainable land management food security livelihoods and climate resilience distinguished delegates In conclusion, let me reiterate Mongolia's unwavering commitment to advancing women's empowerment and gender equality. As President of COP17, I believe the Ulaanbaatar Conference must be an implementation-oriented conference. As the first woman to preside over a UNCCD Conference of the Parties, I encourage all delegations to translate commitments into concrete actions and tangible results. We firmly believe that the Sustainable Development Goals cannot be achieved without gender equality. Ensuring equal rights, opportunities and participation for women is essential to achieving SDG 5 and building a more sustainable future for all. Thank you for your attention. It is my pleasure to introduce the chair to my left, who will guide through this special meeting. Please welcome with me, Her Excellency Tarja-Karin Halonen, former President of Finland. I will now hand over the conduct of the meeting to the chair and I wish you a most productive meeting. Thank you.

So thank you, Madam President. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, I'm very honored to serve as your chair for this COP Gender Caucus. Let me first introduce the speakers for this high level opening segment. His Excellency Ana Paula Chandra Luna de Cavallo. And then Minister of Environment of the Republic of Angola. Her Excellency Alicia Jaramillo Cabo, Vice Minister of Environment and Marine Coastal Affairs of Ecuador. And then Madam Jasmine Fawad, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Madam Osa-Sarolta Regner, Deputy Director General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. And next. is Madam Simgundari Navan-Yunden, National Security and Foreign Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister of Mongolia. And then Mr. Ibrahim Chao, former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. So I have also asked to make some introductory remarks. And so here they are. So, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, dear friends, Within the UN, we have emphasized that sustainable development and equality are inseparable. We cannot build lasting solutions to environmental challenges if half of the humanity is excluded from decision making, resources, or opportunities. The goals of sustainable development, human rights, and gender equality ultimately support one another. Today, we focus on women pastoralists and herders. This is an important discussion. Women are too often presented only as victims of climate change, drought, and land degradation. Yet, around the world, women are also leaders, innovators, and custodians of knowledge. They are not only affected by change, they are helping to shape the response to it. Pastoralist communities are among those experiencing the impacts of changing climate most directly. When droughts become more frequent and pressures on land and water increase, daily life becomes harder. But these burdens are not shared equally. Women often carry on particular heavy responsibilities. They care for their families, support livelihoods, manage natural resources, and sustain community life under increasingly difficult circumstances. Their contribution is enormous. They are not seen because we take them for granted. What we see among women pastoralists reflects the broader reality. Across the world, women are central to the stewardship of land, water, and biodiversity, but they frequently still face barriers in access to land rights, finance, education, technology, and decision-making. Equality remains unfinished business. If we are serious about building resilient societies, we must strengthen three foundations, recognition, rights, and representation. First, recognition. We must value the knowledge, skills, and experience that women bring to managing land and natural resources. Women pastoralists possess deep understanding of local ecosystems livestock management, water resources and environmental change. This knowledge has been built over generations. At a time when the world is searching for solutions, we should listen and see more carefully those who live closest to the land. And then second, rights. Recognition alone is not enough. Women must have genuine opportunities to benefit from their work and knowledge. This means secure access to land and natural resources, education, financing, new technologies, and decent livelihoods. Rights are meaningful only when they can be exercised in everyday life. Particular attention should be paid to young women. They represent both continuity and renewal. With access to opportunities, they can combine traditional knowledge with innovation, entrepreneurship, and new technologies, creating solutions that are socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable. And then the third, representation. Women must be present wherever decisions are made. This applies within families and communities, in national institutions, and here in international processes. A more equal participation of women is not only a matter of fairness, it also leads to better decisions and more sustainable outcomes. This is why forums such as the UNCCD Gender Caucus, are so important. They help ensure that gender equality is not treated as a separate issue, but as an integral part of addressing land degradation, drought and climate resilience. I'm particularly pleased that today we will hear directly from women pastoralists agro-pastoralists, entrepreneurs and innovators. Their experiences remind us that solutions are not created only in conference halls, they are created every day in communities where people adapt, cooperate and care for the land on which all our future depend. The message they bring is both practical and hopeful. Pastoralism is not merely a legacy of the past. It is also part of a sustainable future. And that future must be built with women as equal partners and leaders. As we look beyond COP17, our task is not simply to help women cope with the change. Our task is to ensure that they have the opportunity, the voice and the power to shape that change themselves. At its heart, it is question of equality, dignity, and democracy. It's about every person's right to participate in building our common future. Thank you. And then let's go to the experts. Speakers in the highest opening and welcome from their seats on the podium. I would like to give the floor first to her excellency Ana Paula Chantre Luna de Carvalho Pereira, Minister of Environment of the Republic of Angola to deliver introductory remarks. Please. Okay, the floor is.

I'm so sorry.

Good afternoon.

I will speak in Portuguese.

Excellencies, President of the COP, Ministers, Heads of Delegation, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, on my own behalf and that of the Republic of Angola led by His Excellency President Joao Manuel Gonsalves Lourenco, I congratulate you on your election as president of the 17th Convention of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and I thank the government and the people of Mongolia for their hospitality. The southern and central provinces of Angola are among those worst affected by the degradation of natural resources. in it is in rural communities women who suffer the greatest impact as they're responsible for producing food fetching water and firewood and caring for their families since 2025 millions of people have been affected by drought in kenen wheel and nambe provinces in cuando and cubando and this requires structural responses from the state. And so the government of Angola has been investing in long term solutions to strengthen water security, in particular through the program to combat the effects of drought in southern Angola, which includes the construction of dams, water conveyance canals and water supply systems. In particular, the Kaful Canal, 165 kilometers long, which directly benefits about 250,000 people and the Kalokwe and Ndwe dams. I also want to point to the Namib Verde programme. This promotes tree planting to restore vegetation cover, combat desertification and strengthen the resilience of communities. Madam Chair, Combating desertification requires an integrated approach that brings together environment, development, gender equality and social inclusion. Women must not be seen merely as victims. They are a fundamental part of the solution with their knowledge of agriculture and food conservation. They must have access to training and participate actively in decision-making processes. Because when we protect the land, we protect life. And when we recognize and strengthen the role of women in the sustainable management of natural resources, we enhance the capacity of our societies to face climate challenges and build a fairer, more sustainable, resilient future. Thank you.

So I thank warmly the Minister of Environment of the Republic of Angola. Next, I would like to give the floor to Her Excellency Alicia Zaramilla Cabo, Vice Minister of Environment and Marine Coastal Affairs of Ecuador to deliver introductory remarks. The floor is yours.

Your Excellency, President of COP17, Secretary, distinguished authorities, dear women pastoralists and territorial leaders, delegates, as a woman, it is personally speaking an honor to be participating in the inauguration of this gender caucus. We're meeting today not just to discuss the matter of the management of natural resources. Rather, we've convened this afternoon to address a fundamental and core truth, which is that we as women do not merely inhabit the land, we create it. It is we who sow resilience, cultivate hope, and knit together the fabric of our communities. For generations now, female pastoralists and rural women have been the architects of climate resilience. In the harshest rangelands and in the most hostile environments, it is their hands which are protected by diversity, conserved water and transmitted from generation to generation the ancestral knowledge which keeps this planet alive. But their impact goes beyond the mere environmental. It is the social and economic backbone of entire communities. Their work and their efforts underpin entire local economies, guarantee food security and care for their families. And despite all of those contributions, they continue to be confronted with unjust barriers, barriers to access to land, to financing, to markets, to decision making. In 2026, the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, it's high time to take a quantitative leap forward. The empowerment of women is not assistentialism. It is rather the smartest investment that we can make at this juncture for global sustainability. In Ecuador, a mega diverse country in which we recognize the value and contribution of all our communities, we have been categorical. There can be no fair transition nor restoration of the land if women are not at the forefront showing us the path. Giving them space is not enough. We need rather their leadership at the center of the table designing the solutions for the future. And it is my hope that this afternoon's caucus will not descend into mere diagnoses, analyses and navel gazing, but that we'll walk away this evening with concrete options for direct financing, land rights and concrete partnerships. Because restoring the earth is not just a question of restoring degraded land. It's encouraging those to flourish who care for and maintain land. Where a woman leads, communities prospers, the earth regenerates and future development is possible. I wish you all a very successful and indeed transformative day of exchange. Thank you very much indeed.

So, I thank the Vice Minister of Environment and Marine Coastal Affairs of Ecuador. And I would now like to give the floor to Ms. Yasmeen Fawwaz, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, President Halonen. And it is very interesting that in this gender caucus, I'd like to announce that our COP17 President, Minister Babumukh, Minister of Foreign Affairs, she's the first lady and as Minister of Foreign Affairs for the UNCCD. So we're so proud of her and we will keep supporting one another. I totally agree on all what has been mentioned from the panelists here, my fellow ministers and Your Excellency, the President. And I would like to bring three discussions here to this plenary. One, women as custodians of rangeland, because that's something that I saw here in Mongolia and how women not only as powerful, but also how much they're working as herders and they're part of the family. And they told me so many things here. But also I saw very interesting part that when you work as a pastoralist or a herder, you have to do that as a whole of a family. I heard that when I was in Antalya, also in Turkey, when looking at the Silk Road Caravan. And the woman here is bearing two tasks, not the task of just the income, but the task of sharing and transferring the tradition, the culture and the identity and the authenticity of the country to the generation and that's something that I feel goes beyond and just sitting around the room discussing the decisions on gender although it is very important and for that reason the second message that I would like to see is how those women would be part not only on on participating for the decision listening to their needs because that was part of this cup this is part when what we're doing here in the gender caucus but we heard that also through Mongolia when they hosted the global pastoralist gathering conference. Thanks for your support because most of the women there did show us their needs and we wanted to translate that into actual implementation and you can find that declaration on the website of the UNCCD. So here we're talking about moving from the decision making and the participation to the actual implementation on the ground. How can we ensure the land tenure, the equality and much more on that, the equality in preserving the culture and the identity and the of the country or the region that it is representing. And this I think needs a more intensive discussion how can that be articulated under the CCD someone can say this is far away from the topic of the land no because in this part of the world and with the indigenous people and the local community where women has a much more bigger role of transferring culture and knowledge among generation and the traditions this is in itself brings land into the identity of the people rather than land just an abstract for food water and shelter And I think this will need to see how best can we do that. The third point that I would like to really go for is the gender action plan and what we are doing at the level of the UNCCD framework, thanks to Birgit and his team, and thanks to the support of our partners in keeping that moving forward. What I see right now is that this gender action plan can go also beyond that through a call for action that we will be putting at the UNCCD for seeing how much from our partners, from the entrepreneurs, from the NGOs and from the philanthropy can support that topic of a woman that is working on the land and how can we go from COP17 to COP18 with more results, but in that place the results will be from the ground and from the women themselves. Thank you very.

So, I thank the Executive Secretary of the UNCCD. Next, I would like to give the floor to Ms. Osa Charlotte Regner, Deputy Director General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to deliver introductory remarks.

Thank you so much and thank you Madam Chair and thank you for your personal and political leadership for women's rights and gender equality for many years. Ministers, thank you so much for your contributions here today. Thank you, Ms. Fouad, for your extraordinary leadership here at this meeting. You are a great example to women and for women's leadership. So thank you so much. And thank you to the Mongolian Foreign Minister. I was previously with UN Women, and we had the opportunity to meet in New York under the auspices also of the Security Council and around women, peace and security and foreign policy for women's rights. And these leaderships are extremely, extremely important to give hope to women all over the world. at a time when there are lots of global challenges. So for me, it's an immense honour to be here among you today at this UNCCD Gender Caucus. For UNESCO, gender equality is a priority in everything we do. And I think proudly that the contribution that UNESCO can give to climate change and to the topics discussed here, drought, land, water resources, should be of service to both women and men according to their needs and to their demands. When it comes to the important, very important topic of today, women herders and pastoralists, They are such an important part of the population of the planet. In fact, they make up nearly half of the where they work. That makes up nearly half of the earth's land surface. and they make up half obviously of the global pastoralist population. I had the opportunity to sit down with a group of Mongolian pastoralists, a women's group before coming here, and they told me both about their pride and the traditions that we heard about, but also what it is actually like to survive with small children when it's over 50 degrees Gobi Desert, which has been the case during the last ten years to an increasing extent, as well as children suffering from breathing difficulties because of more and more of sandstorms. These are very concrete examples of what both women and men, mothers and fathers need to solve while they still do their important work. We see also that in these times, male emigration and livelihood strategies shift, for example, towards going to the cities. And women increasingly take on livestock management roles. Their lives change as well, their daily governance of land and water resources increase alongside their household work that they originally did. But at the same time, this shift has not always led to increased decision-making power. In fact, in 85% of countries with available data, women hold weaker land ownership or tenure rights over agriculture and land than men do. Women's rights are obviously covered. Women pastoralists and farmers, farmer and herders rights are covered both in the Beijing Platform as well as in CEDAW. And women have the rights to lead together and we're on the same condition as men. Women are on the front lines of the work that they do, but we also know unfortunately that in conflicts when they arise, women are even more vulnerable than men many times and sometimes even targeted for being women. Climate-driven resources disputes do place women on the front lines of insecurity and they are sometimes disproportionately affected by this. At the same time, we know that evidence shows that women-led rangeland groups excel in leadership and trust. Yet their contributions are sometimes overlooked. So we know the solutions, but still they are not always put in place. So the challenge is not performance, but recognition. And I agree with Ms. Fouad, you, Ms. Fouad, we need to really go from to action from the knowledge that we have, and that needs to be based on women's contributions. UNESCO has a few ways of working with the areas of this whole conference. One area is obviously to safeguard living heritage, which by upholding, for example, the 2003 Intangible Culture Heritage Convention. And in that work, we need to safeguard and see to it that women's rights and voices come to the forefront. We need to protect lands by engaging women pastoralists directly. And we need to elevate indigenous science and knowledge. These are a few of the ways that UNESCO can contribute. And as I said, gender equality goes across everything we do. And I would like to say that to the Rs that the chairperson mentioned to us, representation, rights, recognition, I would also like to add resources and I think it's important to acknowledge that while we meet women's organizations are more underfunded than ever and I would like to give a shout out to women's organizations and women communities representatives here today I know you work under very harsh conditions and we all want to work with you thank you so much for organizing this very very important event thank you all.

I thank the Deputy Director General of UNESCO. Next, I would like to give the floor to Mrs. Shinkundari Navcham-Yunden, the National Security and Foreign Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister of Mongolia to deliver introductory remarks.

Thank you, Chairwoman. Dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, this is my honor to be in this panel and to deliver a statement on behalf of the government of Mongolia. As the COP17 president, the government of Mongolia steps into this gender caucus to help translate the UNCCD Gender Action Plan into measurable implementation before its 2030 sunset. Our vision is historically anchored. It stems from the landmark 1982 UN General Assembly resolution on rural women, which Mongolia proudly initiated and is lately reinforced in Teralia by the Mara Declaration on Women Pastoralists. Mongolia knows pastoralism not as history, but as living practice. Our land range lands stretch across 3 million square kilometers. Our commitment is deeply grounded in our lifestyle as dryland dwellers and range land users. As COP17 president, Mongolia will champion the intersection of range land resilience and transformative gender equality. We will insist that landscape conservation expands to safeguard and secure land tenure rights of women over seasonal pastoral settlements and climate exposed grazing ecosystems. Transformative equality cannot materialize through isolated donor grants. The primary bottleneck is that gender policies remain structurally decoupled from national treasuries. To breach this operational divide, Mongolia proposes the institutionalization of performance-based budgeting as the engine for gender-responsive budgeting. We call on parties to embed gender-specific key performance indicators directly into baseline ministerial budgets. When outcomes are a condition for fund disbursement, fiscal accountability becomes legally mandatory. To bring these macro fiscal frameworks to the ground, Mongolia targets a critical institutional gap, the deficit in rural extension services. Without localized access, nomadic women remain excluded from climate smart technologies and financial tools. So we view decentralized extension networks as the ideal landscape for SDG 17 on partnerships. So first of all, we think that the state should provide institutional legitimacy and baseline fiscal resources. Secondly, the private sector should build relational value chains and climate resilient financial products tailored to mobile livestock production. And last but not least, civil society should have a role to play. It should assure local monitoring, secure the rights-based voting presence of women in community land governance, deliver information and capacity building services, including legal socialization of herders and farmers. With the Prime Minister's Unlock Mongolia initiative, red tapes and barriers are coming down. Services are being digitized, investment pipelines are being built, the economic freedom law is passed, the first ever law on climate change is adopted, Mongolia is unlocking economic opportunities, green transition and a just society. Simultaneously, we call on the UNCCD Secretariat to assess the gender differential impacts of socioeconomic policies on the family wellbeing and nomadic pastoralists. Domestic transformations must be met with structural adjustments in international finance. We call upon developed country parties to scale up global green funding through direct access mechanisms, bypassing excessive administrative burdens to prioritize women at the frontline of climate resilience. Decision making at the highest political levels may have its moments of hesitation. However, the work on the ground by the government, civil society, and the private sector for all women, girls, and men on pastures and croplands must never come to a halt. They feel the compound effects of climate change, desertification, drought, and biodiversity loss on their lives and livelihoods day in and day out. Thank you for organizing this very important session and thank you all for coming to our country and we look forward to a fruitful cooperation and discussion. I thank you.

So, I thank the National Security and Foreign Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister of Mongolia. Finally, I would like to give the floor to the Mr. Ibrahim Chow, former executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to combat desertification to deliver introductory remarks.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I thank all of our panelists who have spoken. It is an honor for me to be on this panel to address this subject, it is so dear to my heart. Today, it is very timely to be focusing on women pastoralists. In order better to understand their situation, I would like you to close your eyes for a moment. Imagine a vast pastoral area, for example, the Sahel at dawn. And there's a figure already walking towards the distant well before sunrise and before anybody else. And that's a woman. She carries water. She carries it over kilometers patiently on her head. She carries milk. In her hands, she holds the wealth of the household. She carries the memory of the pasture, the one that has grown back, or the one that is still dead. This is a living map that no satellite can draw. And she carries all of that, and yet she gets to decide nothing or remove nothing. The flock that she looks after doesn't really belong to her. The departure for transhumance, when? where and why is decided without her under a different tree and by different voices. Her burden is full and yet her voice is empty. Women who come from groups that are already largely marginalized in decision making, these pastoralist women, they're doubly penalized and moreover they are less educated because they are the daughters of people on the move and school is in a fixed place. School is designed for sedentary people, it has never really been able to accommodate people on the move. Remember this image now, a woman carrying the flock on her back. Excluded, first of all, as a pastoralist, secondly as a woman, and from her childhood deprived of a schooling in a school that did not expect her. It's irrational. A shepherd walking blindfold would not get very far, and yet that's exactly what we're doing when we try to build climate resilience without women who know the land. The request is simple. It can be summed up in three words. They want livestock, voice and resources. The livestock that they own, not just that they look after. A voice in the decisions for transhumance and not just in domestic chores. And resources, in direct funding to women's organisations, not as a beneficiary but as a guardian of the land. because land restoration is not going to be won in conference rooms. It will be won well by well, herd by herd, and decision by decision. And the day when the woman who carries everything can finally decide on something, we will have won. I thank you.

So I thank the former executive secretary. of UNCCD. And once again, I thank all speakers for their active participation in this high-level opening and welcome. Then distinguished delegates, I kindly ask you to remain seated while the podium is rearranged.

Yeah. Distinguished delegates, while the podium is changed, I invite you to enjoy a musical performance.

Thank you. So, thanks for the music. It's always something which is inspiring us. Now, I would now like to welcome our moderator who will guide the two subsequent panels. Please welcome with me, Miss Maria Fernandez Jimenez, co-lead of the IYRP 2022. 2026 Working Group on Pastoralism and Gender and Professor of the Range Land Ecology and Management at Colorado State University in United States of America. And hereby hand the proceeding over to the moderator, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, Madam President, Executive Secretary, distinguished delegates, We're honored to have this opportunity and encouraged by the strong words of support for pastoralist women expressed today. As Madam Chair mentioned, we will have two panels and I will moderate both of them. And we'll just start right away into the first panel and then move into the second one. In this panel on the Kathmandu Declaration, we'll ask you to stand with us to translate these words of support into concrete laws, programs, and budgets to unlock the transformative leadership potential of pastoralist women to achieve healthy, biodiverse, and climate resilient rangelands and vibrant pastoralist communities. In May 2026, Over 80 pastoralist women from 38 countries and every pastoralist region of the globe gathered to exchange knowledge and experiences, strengthen global connections, and forge a shared agenda for policy, practice, and knowledge creation at the Global Gathering of Pastoralist Women in Kathmandu. Outcomes of the gathering include groundwork for a global network of pastoralist women and the Kathmandu Declaration of Pastoralist Women. The overall goal of the gathering was to ensure that pastoralist women and their perspectives are always included in decisions that affect them, their lands, and communities, from the local to the global. Our panel today represents a key step in achieving that goal by including pastoralist women as speakers in a plenary session of the UNCCD COP17. The Kathmandu gathering was inspired by the first global gathering of women pastoralists which took place in Meera, India in 2010 and resulted in the Meera Declaration. In Kathmandu, we aimed to revisit the Meera Declaration, reflect on what had been achieved, the challenges that remain, and the new obstacles and opportunities facing pastoralist women and their communities. This process took place over many months. through an approach that engaged hundreds of grassroots pastoralist women in regional and national gatherings in Asia, Africa, and Europe, among others. Our panelists today include the lead organizers of two of these regional pastoralist women's gatherings in Asia and Africa, respectively. CASTOS women led the program planning in the Kathmandu gathering. They designed the application process and criteria, selected delegates from each region, decided what to discuss, made nearly all of the formal presentations, and of course were active voices in the discussions. The framework from the Kathmandu Declaration emerged from these discussions, and the collaborative drafting process continued virtually for two months. The Declaration was accepted by pastoralist women and their representatives from all pastoralist regions on August 7, 2026. It remains a living document to be revisited and revised regularly. We emphasize that this global declaration does not replace or supersede the regional declarations, which include provisions that are specific to regional contexts. Rather, it seeks to align with and reinforce the many shared priorities of pastoralist women across the globe. As our time is limited, we won't read you the whole declaration, but we encourage you to download it and read it yourself. I will ask Babana Rabai to read a portion of the opening of the declaration, a list of the sections, and the closing, so you're aware of the declaration's comprehensive scope and can hear in your minds the women's voices.

Thank you Maria. The summary of the declaration is our planet, our land and our livestock. We, the pastoralists and agro-pastoralist women, gather here in Kathmandu from 26 to 29 May 2026, unite across the world and the different continents, declare that pastoralism not of the past, but the solutions for the future. And the pastoralist women are at the heart of the solutions. We stand up and we speak out in one voice to claim our space, shape our future, and transform our planet. Recognizing diversity and continue of the pastoral system across regions shaped by ecological conditions, culture traditions, governance system, and recognized economy, we call for extensive. land-based pastoral practices to be properly valued and supported for their unique contributions through legit nations, climate and livestock policy and through public investment. While our production system may differ across regions, we share the same commitment to caring for the land, our animal, our community and the territories and ecosystems that sustain us. pastoralist women will proudly mentor inspire and empower the next Generations to build a resilient future in pastoralism ensure that enduring Legacy of family culture and sustainable stewardship for the world and rangeland the declaration address 10 key uh themes which is following first recognize right and self deformations, second mobility and land rights, third economy, food sovereignty, livelihood and working conditions, four environment and climate justice, five pastoralist women knowledge, research, learning and integration continuity, six health, education, soil support and access infrastructure and technology, seven, safety, security and dignity, eight, representations and decisions making, nine, peace building and conflict resolutions, ten, monitoring and accountability. The declarations conclude with the following word, the voice, struggle, knowledge, story of thousands of women from the living foundation of the declarations and we please to work together in solidarity and ensure no pastoralism woman is left behind. Thank you, Maria.

Thank you, Bhawna. Now we'll move on to our first panel discussion. I'll be asking three questions of each panelist, one question at a time. And our first question is to begin, could each of you please introduce yourselves and the pastoralist community you represent and tell us why the Kathmandu Declaration is important to you? And we'll begin with Debbie Dowden.

Thank you, Maria, and I'm honored to be here representing thousands of pastoral women from across the world, from the Arctic right down to the bottom of Australia. So thank you. My name is Debbie Dowden. I'm the founding chair of the Southern Rangelands Pastoral Alliance in Western Australia and a director for Australian Women in Agriculture. I've more than 30 years of lived experience as a pastoralist in one of the most remote and toughest parts of Australia. And I can tell you this, I've spoken with pastoralist women from around the world and the Kathmandu Declaration matters to me and it should matter to everyone here. UNCCD's own research shows that environmental outcomes improve when women are included as equal partners in decision making when we have real authority, not token inclusion. Many pastoralist women are already restoring and protecting rangelands. We care for landscapes, hold families and communities together, and keep generational knowledge alive. Yet, some pastoralist women face disproportionate challenges. Some have no access to health services and education. Some will be married as child brides. Some face violence, land dispossession, and have no rights to own land or livestock. When you are fighting these daily battles, there's little space left to heal the land. To fulfil our role as land stewards and defenders against desertification, our rights must be recognised and enforced. The women making daily decisions about land must also be recognised in law. Our voices must be present at every level of rangeland governance. If this convention stands with pastoralist women, we will be among your strongest allies in achieving land degradation neutrality and safeguarding rangelands for generations to come. If we are sidelined, the cost will be bare ground, lost livelihoods and broken communities. The Kathmandu Declaration is both our invitation and our challenge. Walk with us. listen to us and make space for us in the decisions that shape the lands upon which we all depend.

Thank you, Debbie. Over to you, Hannah Longole.

Thank you, Maria. My name is Hannah Longole and I come from a pastoralist community in Uganda. I was born to a polygamous family of over 40 siblings. My advocacy started when I was a child at 10 years old. One day I asked my father for a piece of land in a naive way. To my surprise, my father told me that girls are not allowed to own land traditionally, and this continues to date. This response ignited a determination in me to pursue my education with the hope of one day owning my own land and securing my future. This and more stories is what the girl child continues to undergo to date. Against this background, I have dedicated over 25 years to advocating for land rights, especially for fellow pastoralist women like me. I founded the Atik Cultural Center In 2018, an indigenous women and youth-led NGO in Uganda, focusing on promoting positive pastoralist practices, women land rights, and social justice. Through the organization, I have been able to support and organize campaigns and gatherings with support from partners for pastoralists, including the African pastoralist women gathering held in Uganda. Voices of the Rangelands, African pastoralist women rising for land rights, climate justice, equity and peace. We brought together over 200 participants in Africa to discuss pressing issues affecting pastoralist women land rights. Securing land rights for pastoralist women is essential for advancing gender equality. promoting economic development and fostering social justice. When women have secure access to land, this can enhance our livelihoods, support our families, and contribute more meaningfully to our communities. The empowerment aligns with the COP17 theme of climate resilience and sustainable development. emphasizing the vital role women play as key restorers of land and ecosystems. Additionally, it reflects the commitments of the Rio Convention, which underscores the importance of gender-sensitive approaches to environmental management. and the Kakamado Declaration, which advocates for recognizing women as primary agents of land restoration and sustainable land use. Together, these frameworks highlight that empowering women in land rights is fundamental to achieving resilient, equitable, and sustainable development. Thank you, Maria.

Thank you so much, Hannah.

Jamal Dhari everyone, I wanted to give thanks to the UN Sustainable Gender Panel to give us the opportunity to share our things. Before that, I also say that in Mongolia, like in my region, we say the Mandalhari pastoralists we call Mandalhari in Mongolia also they say the Malchin. So we say the same identity at the global level also. My name is Bhavna Rabari and I come from Gujarat, India. I serve as the president of the Pastoral Women Alliance and I also represent pastoralist women in the global spaces. I grew up watching my mother and my grandmother and women in my community care for livestock with strength, patience and wisdom. From them, I learned that livestock is not just an occupation for us, it is our identity, our culture and our way of surviving with dignity. For As a Baladhari woman, land is never just a land. It is a grazing, food, water, medicines, mobility and life. We know how to read the land, how to protect it, how to restore it and how to live with in balance. When the grass is gone, we know where to mow. When the soil is weak, we know how to let it breathe. When the seasons change, we adapt. This knowledge has been carried by women from generations. This knowledge is not written in book, but it is written in our life. by maintaining pure and resilient breed. Pastoralist women protect biodiversity, strength, food system and keep pastoralism alive. Let me share with you one example that in my community when women get married, we give her the best breed so she will continue our breed in different regions and this is our traditional knowledge to how to conserve our breed, how to conserve our rangeland. That is why the Katwindu Declaration is so important for me. It is not just a document written on paper, it is the voice of pastoralist women from around the world saying that we matter, our knowledge matter, and our future matter. It recognizes that pastoralist women are not invisible. We are land stewards, breed protectors, and leaders of the resilience. If the world is serious about destoring land, addressing climate change, and building sustainable future, then it must end with pastoralist women because when women are supported, land in restore when women are recognized livestock breed are produced and when pastoralist women are heard entire community can thrive thank you Maria.

Thank you so our our next question is what do you want what do you most want decision makers to know about the Kathmandu declaration this time let's start with you Hannah thank you Maria.

The Commando Declaration highlights the multifaceted nature of pastoralism and emphasizes the critical role of pastoralist women within these systems. It underscores that pastoralism is not just about livestock production, but also managing landscapes, ensuring food security, fostering social unity and preserving cultural traditions. Mobility emerges as a central process for rangeland management and the functioning of pastoralist systems, reflecting our dynamic and adaptive nature. Recognizing women as central actors in pastoralism, broadens our understanding of these systems, revealing their complexity and interconnectedness across economic, social, cultural and environmental domains. The declaration calls on institutions to approach pastoralism holistically as a living, evolving system rather than through isolated policies targeting individual sectors. Thank you, Maria.

Thank you, Hannah, for those important insights about the need for a holistic, integrated approach that reflects women's roles in these ecosystems. Bhavna, what about you?

What I most want decision makers to know is that the Kathmandu Declaration is not just a result of one meeting. in one place. It is the outcome of much longer women-led process that began before Kathmandu through regional gathering across the world, including Asia, Africa, and the other regions. These regional gatherings were important because they created space for the pastoralist women to come together, reflect on our reality, discuss what has changed over the year, and identify the challenges that still remain. They were not symbolic events, they were political and collective space where pastoralist women shaped our own agenda from our life experience. From Asia, this process was especially most important for me because we hosted the Asia Pastoral Women Gathering in Gujarat. That gathering brought together pastoralist women leaders from across Asia to reflect on the journey from Mera 2010 to Journey Mera Plus 15, to discuss issues such as land rights, mobility, climate justice, women leadership, dignity and accountability, and to develop the Asia declarations that later contribute to the global discussion declarations in Kathmandu so when we speak about Kathmandu declarations we should understand that it carries the voice of many regions not just one event the declarations in priority coming from Asia Africa Europe and other regions when brought into Kathmandu discuss together and adapt on a shared global declarations by pastoralist women. Please do not see the Kathmandu declarations as only a document. She is a political collective voice of pastoralist women from across the world, shaped through regional processes and brought together into one global call for right, dignity and leadership. Thank you, Maria.

Thank you, Bhavna. Debbie.

What I most want decision makers to understand is that the Kathmandu declaration is not a wish list. or symbolic statement, it's the inspiration for a practical roadmap written by women who are already keeping the rangelands alive. It starts from a very grounded reality. Pastoralist women are environmental stewards and rights holders. Our daily decisions and frontline actions against land degradation and desertification. Whether rangelands recover or collapse often comes down to those choices, yet the women making them are still treated as invisible labour rather than as key actors implementing the UNCCD. The declaration also makes a critical point about solutions. Pastoralism is not a problem to be controlled. It is a climate adaptive, low carbon, land efficient system that is central to food security, biodiversity and resilience in drylands that cover much of the planet. Mobility, Indigenous and pastoral knowledge and women's leadership are presented as core pillars of rangelands health, not as side issues. What really sets Kathmandu apart though, is that it contains the voices of pastoral women. Within the declaration we understand what securing rights actually means. tenure, grazing, water, services, finance. Finally, the declaration links land health directly to women's representation and it invites accountability architecture, clear indicators, grievance mechanisms, and a demand that pastoral women be part of national reporting and review. The Kathmandu Declaration will tell you what to do, who to involve and what to measure if you're serious about keeping the rangelands and the women who care for them at the center of UNCCD implementation.

Thank you, Debbie. And now onto our third and final question for this panel. What concrete measures can policymakers take to achieve these aims of the Kathmandu Declaration and what successful models could they adopt or adapt to implement them? Let's start with you this time, Bhawana.

Thank you, Maria. As my point of view, policymakers can make the Kathmandu Declarations real by taking political actions on land rights, women leadership, and pastoral livelihood. The first step is to legally recognize common rangeland, grazing corridor and seasonal mobility because pastoralism depend on movement, not fixed boundary. Without secure land and mobility rights, pastoralist community cannot survive. The second step is to place pastoralism women at the center of decision making. Women should not only be consulted, they should have a real authority in land, rangeland and livestock commitment. Our knowledge about grazing, water, breeding, And land restoration is essential because we are the one who manage this system every day. The third step is to invest in practical support that matches pastoralists life. That means water access, veterinary service, drought preparedness, breed improvement and mobile service that move with community instead of expecting community to stop moving. It also means supporting women's ownership of livestock and their role in preserving local breed. There are already successful model to learn from. In my place, women-led pastoral committee have helped restore degraded land, improve biodiversity and increase milk production. In other place, community land registrations and participatory land mapping have strengthened land security and reduced conflict. This example show that women and community are trusted, they can restore land and strengthen livelihood. My main message is if government want climate resilience, land restorations and sustainable development, they must move beyond recognitions. and invest in right leadership and implementations. Pastoralist women are not only asking for support, we are already leading the solutions. Thank you, Maria.

Thank you, Bhavna. Debbie Dowden.

Thank you, Maria. Policymakers can start tomorrow by hardwiring the Kathmandu Declarations aims into the laws, budgets, and programs that already exist, rather than treating it as something separate or aspirational. Second, governments can redesign incentives so environmental repair is a viable business model for pastoral women and starting from the ground up. That includes payments for ecosystem services, rangeland specific carbon and nature repair schemes, and tax and lease settings that reward good land management practices. We want national programs where pastoralist women can register projects as proponent owners, receive direct finance and be guaranteed fair contracts and benefit sharing, building on the emerging Australian ecosystem service and carbon initiatives tailored to arid rangelands. Third on implementation and accountability, policy makers can borrow Kathmandu's own architecture, establish dedicated rangelands restoration and monitoring programs that combine local observation, indigenous and pastoral knowledge, and remote sensing. They should report against indicators on mobility, gender equality, and land condition, and create accessible grievance mechanisms when rights are violated. If I could leave decision makers with one image, it would be this. a pastoralist woman standing on her country making daily choices that determine whether the land becomes bare and broken or stays alive. The Kathmandu Declaration is her invitation to you to stand beside her, put these choices into law and budgets, and finally bring rangelands and the women who care for them from the margins of global policy to the centre.

Thank you, Debbie. And Hannah Longole, you have the final word.

Thank you, Maria. With the very words of the UNCCD, restoring land, restoring hope. Without securing land for women, without including our voices, excluding us from the table, restoration will not happen. This is what I can start before putting my demands. The practical experience of pastoralist women reveals what is needed to sustain resilient pastoralist systems. And resilient pastoralism systems are essential to achieving the UNCCD objectives in rangelands. Climate financing in rangelands areas needs to be adapted to pastoralist systems rather than requiring pastoral systems to adapt climate financing. Moving from recognition to implementation means ensuring that policies, finance, research and services work with pastoralism on its own terms. rather than expecting pastoral systems to adapt to external models and agendas set out elsewhere. The real test of success will be whether governments move beyond consultation to genuine partnerships with pastoralist women in shaping the future of rangelands. An exemplary instance is the Pan-African Pastoralist Women Gathering that I contributed in March 2026 in Kampala in Uganda. In this event, we handed up coming up with the Pan-African Charter for Rangelands and Pastoralists, a voice of pastoralist women in Africa, and we also established the Pan-African Pastoralist Women Network. and also the Range Lands Value Addition Learning Center, both of which serve as permanent platforms for advocacy, knowledge exchange, and solidarity. The gathering was graced by the vice president of Uganda, a pastoral woman herself, who shared with us stories which still resonate with pastoralist women. She officially launched this initiative to sustain the momentum for International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists and hopes that the UNCCD will as well consider this going forward. By fostering dialogue between decision makers and traditional leaders, the gathering successfully contributed to securing over 300 hectares of land designated as a center for excellence for pastoral women. This example underscores the importance of continued support to dialogues between traditional leaders and leaders in our countries. And of course, investments to advance the rights, livelihoods, and land security of pastoralist women across the region. I thank you.

Thank you, Hannah. And in closing, I hope you'll all take the time to read the Kathmandu Declaration in full. What stays with me from our panelists' words is that the Kathmandu Declaration is not symbolic. It represents the collective political voice of pastoralist women and a practical roadmap for policymakers to follow. It's a living, dynamic document that calls for development of a mechanism for regular monitoring, review, and updating with the full participation of pastoralist women and the resources to support this work. The pathway to producing the declaration serves as a model for a truly pastoralist woman-led global process, an example of how pastoralist women's allies can support such approaches without co-opting them by grounding them in indigenous and feminist values of relationship, respect, responsibility, reciprocity, and reflexivity. The Kathmandu gathering was a life-changing event for many participants. Let us work together to make implementation of the Kathmandu Declaration a process with transformative outcomes for pastoralist women and communities across the globe. It's not an understatement to say that the vibrant future of pastoralist systems and rangelands depends upon pastoralist women's knowledge, leadership, labor, and skills, which in turn require their personal safety and well-being, their full participation in all levels of governance, and the enforcement of their equal rights to land, livestock, social and financial services, information, and political participation. Please join me in thanking all the participants for panel one. We will now move seamlessly on to our second panel, which focuses on the role of women in drylands as entrepreneurs and innovators. Ample research has shown that when women have secure rights, access to finance and technology, and meaningful participation in governance, They drive measurable improvements in income generation, biodiversity conservation, restoration, and community resilience. Among pastoralist households, women are more likely to allocate resources and income they control to uses that benefit the entire household, like food, health, and education, compared to how men allocate resources. In my own work with pastoralist women in the US, Spain, and Mongolia, I found women are often at the forefront of institutional innovations and livelihood diversification. Today, we have the opportunity to hear from three women working to support women entrepreneurs and innovators in three different dryland contexts across the world. And once again, I'll begin by asking each of you to introduce yourselves, and we'll begin with Alima Sagito.

Good afternoon, distinguished chair, esteemed panelists, delegates, and colleagues. My name is Alima Sagito. I'm the executive director for SWEDEA Ghana, it's a women's rights organization, and also the founder of a producer association called Savannah Women Farmers Association with over 10,000 members. And I'm also a proud member of WECAN and WECAN community of practice for women in drylands and agro-civil pastoral systems since 2021. I have worked alongside more than 20,000 rural and peri-urban women, young people, and marginalized communities across Northern Ghana, advancing gender equality, sustainable livelihoods, dryland resilience, and inclusive governance. Through this experience, I have learned one very powerful lesson, which is women are not waiting to become agents of change. They are already leading the change. Across grasslands communities, women are restoring land, they are protecting the ecosystems, building enterprises, and strengthening resilience local communities. Today, I am honored to bring these voices innovations and experiences of women from the grassroots to this global platform, which is COP17. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Alima. Grace Sikore, please introduce yourself.

Thank you so much. Good afternoon, distinguished chair, fellow panelists, delegates and colleagues. My name is Grace Sikore. I'm speaking on behalf of the Pastoral Women Council, PWC, in Northern Tanzania. I'm also a member of the WCP, the Women Community of Practice for Dryland and Agrosilvo pastoral systems. For more than two decades, PWC has worked with indigenous pastoralist women to strengthen their rights, economics, independence, leadership, and capacity to respond to drought risk. Our experiences is rooted in a particular social and ecological reality. For indigenous pastoralists, land is not simply an economic asset. Lands connect to livestock, water, pasture, medicinal plants, cultural identity, spirituality, and community survival. Our climate leadership therefore cannot be separated from our identities and collective rights as indigenous peoples and pastoralists. When droughts reduces water and pasture, the impact is not only a decline in production, it can disrupt livestock mobility, food security, social relations, care responsibilities, and the transmission of pastoralists and indigenous knowledge between generation. This is the perspective I would like to bring today in this discussion. Thank you.

Thank you, Grace. Tamara, please introduce yourself.

Thank you, Maria. Well, my name is Tamara Kranchaninov. I'm the general coordination of the Brazil Northeast Ecological Transformation Plan. And it's an honor to be here today representing Consortium Northeast, which led to the drafting of this plan in partnership with the Brazilian Ministry of Finance and also the Open Society Foundations. The plan is a strategic document that consolidates integrated actions across nine Brazilian states for sustainable development and climate adaptation. with particular attention to drylands in the areas that are undergoing desertification.

Thank you, Tamara. Now, we had planned to ask each panelist three questions, as in the prior panel, but I've just been informed we're running rather short of time. So let's go with the first question, and if you can make your remarks very brief, then maybe we'll be able to answer all three. Let me start with you, Tamara. Please share what methods contributed to the success of your initiative.

Well, there is a transformative practice led by women in our semi-arid region, built on a long history of resistance, resilience, and innovation. And it is from this practice developed with the territories that the Brazil Northeast Ecological Transformation Plan draws into two central approaches, participation and collaboration in social technologies, recognizing local and ancestral knowledge as part of those technology. The first approach rests in one premise. The most effective solutions are co-created with the communities. It means value local knowledge and local assets and starting from the concrete needs of each territory. There are several experiences that can relate to that in Nordeste. And these experiences like this that guided the plan. More than climate adaptation plan, The Petaenor Dash is a microeconomic strategy connecting climate action to social inclusion and justice. Gender here is cross-cutting in its principles and governance and concrete in its access. My economy and agri-food systems would recognize women's knowledge as a social economic asset adaptation, circular and solidarity economy focused on the productive inclusion of women. new green-blue infrastructure, where women appear as guardians of food heritage and must be included in the governance of water infrastructure.

Thank you, Tamara. How about you, Grace? From your experience, what approaches successfully strengthen pastoralist women's entrepreneurship and innovation?

Thank you. At PwC, we have learned that entrepreneurship cannot be strengthened through business training alone. It requires collective organization, control of productive asset, supportive social norms, and a direct connection between community priorities and public decision making. Our methodology begin with structure that women already know and trust. These include women rights and leadership forums, village community banks, community paralegals, women solidarity bombers, village assemblies and communities committees. These structures perform different but connected function. The group provide savings, credit and mutual accountability. Women forums strengthen leadership and collective advocacy. Community paralegals help women address barriers related to land, property, violence, access to justice. Village assemblies provide a pathway through which women's priorities can enter a formal community planning. One important example is our process for developing community climate action plans, the CAPs. We begin by discussing climate change with communities and examining how it affects water, pasture, livestock, household livelihoods, and care responsibilities. Women, men, young people and groups facing additional barriers then participate in a collective dryland assessment using the Pamordia Voice Climate Resilience Planning Toolkit. The communities identify its priorities and develops a climate action plan. A gender equitable committee is selected by a village assembly to coordinate implementation and monitor the progress. The final and most important step is advocacy. The plan must move beyond the community meeting and into village, ward, district plans and budgets. In 10 villages in Longido District, this process resulted in community climate action plans being incorporated into the district council's 10-year climate change master plan. For 2024-2025 financial year, the district council committee approximately 12,000 USD to begin implementing these priorities. Locally led adaptation solutions and community knowledge must be connected to public institutions, public budgets and clear accountability mechanisms. For us, this is also part of entrepreneurship. Women are not merely invited to join an activity design swell. They identified challenges in dryland areas, propose local appropriate solutions, organize resources, and help determine how investments are implemented.

Thank you, Grace. Finally to you, Alima, what inclusive approach has successfully strengthened women entrepreneurs and innovators in Ghana's drylands?

Yeah, sorry, I see that we have learned that we can never restore land while livelihoods remain fragile and we can also not restore land. We can also not build resilience while on degraded lands. Our approach therefore has always been very integrated. We are connecting leadership. women's leadership, access to productive resources, financial inclusion, smart farming methods, green entrepreneurship, and ecosystem restoration through work that we do with forest and farm producer organizations. How do we do it? We begin by building trusted safe spaces where women can speak, they can learn, they can innovate confidently and organize collectively. We know that when women organize, their individual experiences become collective knowledge, and their ideas can grow into enterprises and therefore practical solutions. For us, innovation is not only about technology, it includes stronger producer organizations, village savings groups, improved business models, solar powered irrigation, business centers, practicing agroforestry among others. Through this integrated approach, that we are delivering tangible results. Currently, we have more than 500 women that have received leadership training and also mentoring over 555 young other women in dryland activities who have benefited from mentorship. Sister women so far have gained commercial access to land, which is ranging from approximately 20 to 30 hectares. This has never happened until we use integrated approach. Through more than 200 village savings and loan associations, women have collectively mobilized over 200,000 US dollars of savings over the past four years, which they are investing on dryland resilience interventions. We also have over 75 groups, women groups, that have also strengthened their capacity in market access, in packaging and branding. Importantly, we also say the economic gains are directly connected to environmental restoration. Women are protecting share parklands. For us in the north, share is our good, so we don't joke with it. So managing agroforestry farms is also very important. Naturally, more than 10,000 tree crop seedlings, which we are planting on drylands, and developing climate smart irrigation and home-based enterprises and businesses. These results are interconnected. Leadership supports access to land. Secure land encourages investment. Savings and businesses strengthen skills, strengthen enterprises, and profitable green businesses create incentives to protect land, trees and water. This is the transformative power of women-led innovative economic empowerment, social transformation and ecological restoration advancing together. Thank you.

Thank you, Alima. And unfortunately, because of the time constraints, we're going to leap over to the third the third question. And as with the other panel, our final question will ask each of you, what are your key recommendations to the party delegates? Let's start with Grace.

Thank you so much. My first key message is require every dryland adaptation and restoration programs to demonstrate how indigenous pastoralist women participated in its design, what resources they control, and how their priorities are reflected in the budget. But the second one is integrates community dryland actions plan into local and national systems. Each plan should have an assigned institution, a budget line, an implementation timeline, and a mechanism for reporting progress back to the community. And the third one is apply gender responsive assessment tools to rangeland restoration. water, livestock and sustainable land management investment. Monitoring should examine asset ownership, control of income, time saved, enterprise survival, household decision making, and changes in social norms. Finally, create direct and flexible financing window for women-led indigenous pastoralist organization. Funding should support not only individual activities, but also the local institutions that make those activities sustainable, including women groups, paralegal system, saving mechanism, climate committees and community monitoring. When a women saving group finances an enterprise, when a grass seed banks restore a range land, when a village climate plan enters a public budget, and when lessons from that experience are shared across different ecosystem, we are no longer discussing isolated projects. We are building an interconnected system of rights, knowledge, economic power, ecological restoration and public accountability. This is assisting indigenous pastoralists who may need in order to transform their innovation into longer term climate resilience.

Thank you. What about you, Tamar? What are your key recommendations for delegates?

Thank you, Maria. Well, many of the experiences that we described at the plan can serve as a reference for semi-arid regions worldwide. There is still much ground to cover on women and climate change, especially as desertification advances across arid and semi-arid lands in Brazil and beyond. The knowledge and leadership of women in the semi-arid are extra strategic assets. The resilience already underway in our region and the potential of the Catinga social biodiversity economy are central pillars of ecological transformation in Brazil. On that basis, we bring some recommendations. On finance, prioritize direct and accessible finance for women in agroecological family farming and for women entrepreneurs in the solidarity economy, and create mechanisms that tie resources to agroecology, sustainable management, and social technologies for living with the semi-arid. If dedicated allocations for community projects led by women that combine ecological restoration such as with income generation. On policy, strengthen women's leadership in adaptation in arid, semi-arid, and desertifying lands, integrating an intersectional perspective into adaptation plans and into green and white infrastructures policy. And on recognitions, consolidate international recognition of the interdependence between gender equality, water security, and food security in these lands. as an indispensable condition for the sustainable development of agriculture and livestock in the global south. Well, one final point, it is urgent to see women not only as victims of climate change, but agents of ecological transformation in arid, semi-arid and desertifying regions, connecting public policy, climate finance and territory ground knowledge.

Thank you, Tamara. Alima, what are your key recommendations?

Yes, I would like to leave parties and women partners with some very clear call to action. First, recognize women as leaders. Women are already restoring land, we are managing natural resources, producing food and building local economies. Invest in them as decision makers, entrepreneurs, innovators, and leaders. Secondly, secure women's rights to land and productive resources. Women cannot be expected to invest in restoration without secure access to land, water, and forests. Women's rights, land rights are fundamental to restoration, climate resilience, and sustainable development. Third, invest directly in women-led organizations and enterprises. Grassroots women organizations, cooperatives, and producer groups are powerful vehicles for scaling local solutions. Funding must be accessible, predictable, and long-term. Fourth, we are looking at fund finance, make finance work for women. Expand women access to savings, affordable credit, grants, insurance, and climate finance while designing instruments tailored on women's needs. Fifth, we are looking at redefined innovation. For us, innovation must include not only technology, it must also include traditional knowledge, social innovation, collective organization, improved business models, and locally developed solutions. Sixth, strengthen women's networks and knowledge exchange. Platforms such as the WECAN community of practice, demonstrate the power of connection. Investing in self, self learning, mentorship, intergenerational knowledge exchange, and links between grassroots women and global institutions. Seventh, move from participation to meaningful influence. Women's presence in meeting is not enough. They need the information, resources, capacity, and institutional space to shape decisions and influence policies on land, drought, forest, and climate action. Finally, build long-term partnerships, connecting local action to global commitments. Global agreements must translate into tangible improvements for women and communities, while global policies must be informed by local knowledge, lived experiences and locally developed innovations. If we invest in women's leadership, rights, knowledge, organizations and innovation, we invest in the resilience of our land, resilience of our communities, and therefore our future. Thank you.

Thank you, Adima. In closing, one message that comes across strongly in both panels is the importance of supporting women to meet and collaborate in safe spaces with time to build trust, exchange knowledge, plan and act collectively. We've heard examples of the power of such groups and gatherings from the community to the region to the global gathering of pastoralist women. But women in drylands want and deserve more than women's spaces. They deserve, and our rangelands and drylands need, women to be represented and to meaningfully participate in all levels of governance. From both panels, we've heard again and again that women's secure rights to land, livestock, information, and finance are essential to their contributions to land restoration and climate resilience. So what concrete measures can you, the parties, the private sector, development partners, and civil society take to tap the transformative potential of indigenous pastoralists and other rural women's leadership and entrepreneurship? Our panelists distilled their priorities down to a list of actionable recommendations. I'm gonna actually skip a few of these because they're a bit general, but we've heard again and again, acknowledge women as knowledge holders and ensure that they're meaningfully included at every level, support policies and institutional frameworks that strengthen leadership, entrepreneurship, economic agency for women in drylands while investing in the existing networks that connect locally grounded innovation with markets, finance, and policy processes. enact and enforce legal frameworks that guarantee women's equal rights and access to land and resources, while implementing advocacy campaigns that challenge cultural norms and practices that restrict women's land rights and their participation. And now for some more specific suggestions. Mandate a review by COP18 of the barriers to accessing finance faced by women-led community organizations in arid and semi-arid lands, with recommendations for procedural adaptation of existing financial instruments. Review health services for pastoralist women. Identify existing successful women-centered models of healthcare for mobile pastoralists and work with pastoralist women to adapt successful models to local conditions, aiming for at least one pilot project in each country with a substantial pastoralist population by 2028 and successful pilots scaled out and replicated by 2030. Develop and implement a 10-year women-centered rangeland restoration roadmap with clear targets, milestones, accountability, and monitoring indicators. And finally, returning to the Kathmandu Declaration of Pastoralist Women, we call on the parties to support and fund the creation of a mechanism to assess progress towards achieving the goals of the Kathmandu Declaration by COP18, involving pastoralist women in the design and supporting a third global gathering of pastoralist women in 2029. So please join me in thanking all of our panelists and With this, we conclude our panel sessions. The panelists, please remain seated on the podium for the next part of the program, and I yield the floor to Madam Chair.

So I thank the moderator for the excellent guidance through the two panels and all the panelists for their valuable contributions. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, I will now open the floor for interventions from the floor. There is no list of the speakers, so please press the microphone button on the console in front of you if you wish to speak. The floor will be given in the order of requests received, if time permits. we will give the floor back to the panelists to respond. I would like to inform delegations that all speakers will have a maximum of three minutes to deliver their interventions as announced during the conference. Time limit will be strictly enforced by automatic microphone cut off. The timer will be projected on the screen. To assist speakers to observe the time limit, the microphone will start blinking 30 seconds before the time limit elapses. So, and now it starts. So I give the floor to the distinguished representative of the European Union. Please.

Hello. Thank you, Chair. I'm speaking on behalf of the European Union and its 27 Member States. The EU and its Member States would like to reaffirm their commitment to the adoption of all proposed agenda items. including the agenda item on gender. We recall that women and girls, half the world's population, still face structural inequalities in access to land tenure, natural resources, finance, information and decision making, holding back the achievement of the land degradation neutrality targets and the sustainable development goals, including SDG5 on gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. We highly appreciate the contributions made by speakers in this gender caucus, which highlighted the critical role of women pastoralists in sustainable land management, underscored the importance of securing land tenure and ensuring that the perspectives, experiences and priorities of women pastoralists are reflected in decision-making processes. Women are key agents of change, strengthening livelihoods, enhancing resilience and contributing significantly to the achievement of the objectives of this convention. We welcome the gender caucus sessions being held in plenary as an official part of the COP and CRIC programs of work and call for the continued convening on an annual basis in addition to informal gender caucus sessions in line with decision 25 COP16. The gender caucus has proven to be a key platform for identifying bottlenecks in the implementation of the gender action plan and its roadmap. Gender equality has been identified as a key element of the future strategic framework by the IWGFSF. We call on future gender caucus sessions to focus on the development of a post-2030 gender action plan, ensuring close coordination and synergies with the development of the Convention's future strategic framework. This should also include gender-specific indicators that capture intersectionality and better assess the differentiated impacts of DLDd on women, men, girls and boys. We reaffirm our commitment to the mandates established by the COP, including through decisions 23/COP15, 24/COP15, and 25/COP16, which enshrine gender-responsive and transformative approaches as an essential dimension of policymaking and call for continued gender mainstreaming under the Convention. We celebrate the progress on gender parity under the UNCCD. The Women Delegates Fund and the Youth Women Negotiators Project are initiatives that brought CRIC 23 closer to parity. The Women Delegates Fund, funded by Germany, Spain and Switzerland, and the EU Women Negotiators Project continue building capacity for women delegates and their negotiation skills for COP17. We congratulate the Secretariat on its cooperation with other organizations such as UN Women and VOCAT. We encourage enhanced joint action on gender for the three Rio Conventions and we advocate for synergies in the implementation of gender action plans. The EU remains fully committed to constructive engagement and to advancing gender equality in the implementation of the Convention. Thank you.

Thank you. I thank the representative of the European Union. And now I will always say that who is the next one. So the next one will be now Zimbabwe. And after that is Canada. Now the distinguished representative of Zimbabwe, the floor is yours.

Chairperson, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, Zimbabwe is honored to address this gender caucus where we recognize that the fight against desertification and land degradation cannot be won without the full and equal participation of women. In our drylands and rangelands, women pastoralists and herders are the backbone of resilience. Their knowledge, labor, and leadership sustain communities and ecosystems alike. Ladies and gentlemen, as the at the community level, women pastoralists are custodians of traditional knowledge. They manage grazing cycles, preserve indigenous fodder species, and safeguard water points. Women have an intrinsic connection with nature, hence their intimate understanding of seasonal variability and livestock health ensures that range lands remain productive even under the stress of drought and climate change. In Zimbabwe's Runde and Save catchments, women have pioneered sustainable grazing practices and have community veld fire management committees that reduce degradation while strengthening food security systems. Women are central to social cohesion and its inherent transformation. As pastoralists and herders, they manage competing demands for scarce resource use, resolve conflicts and ensure equitable access to grazing and water. Their leadership in community institutions strengthen governance and build trust which remain very essential ingredients for sustainable arrangement management when women are empowered the communities are more resilient inclusive and adaptive women embody maternal bravery and resilience they bear the brand of climate variability yet they transform adversity into opportunity thus reframing women not as victims of climate stress but as leaders of transformation by organizing savings groups leading restoration projects and mentoring youth, they ensure that resilience is not only ecological but also social for prosperity. Their contributions are aligned directly with the UNCCD Gender Action Plan, which calls for women leadership in land restoration and decision making. Zimbabwe therefore calls upon this caucus and the wider COP17 community to, number one, integrate women's traditional and scientific knowledge into restoration programs, to expand the targeted capacity building, including digital tools such as GIS and Earth observation, tailored for women pastoralists. Three, ensure financing mechanisms are gender responsive, enabling women to scale their innovations. Four, strengthen regional and global cooperation to mainstream gender in all range and dryland initiatives. Finally, Zimbabwe...

Thank you for your contribution the representative of the Zimbabwe the next one will be Canada and after Canada Panama so the distinguished representative of Canada the floor is yours.

Madam chair colleagues stakeholders parties to the convention.

I thank you for giving me the floor to speak about this important matter Canadian value.

Canada firmly believes that gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in all their diversity is critical to the achievement of peace, prosperity and sustainable development. In 2020, we provided $6 million in initial investment to accelerate the development of the UNCCD Gender Action Plan, Since then, we've seen the development of a roadmap, the establishment of a gender caucus, and stronger design of gender-responsive programming. These developments are welcome and essential. Gender equality is a fundamental human right, and gender equality is just good development. Canada is concerned about the coordinated efforts to roll back women's and girls' rights. Safeguarding human rights leads to a safer, more prosperous and equitable future for all. This is why the work of the Gender Caucus continues to be so important at a time when the multilateral space is under threat. The work that is done here together matters. We commend other parties, including Spain, Switzerland, the European Commission and Germany, for continuing to fund gender action in partnership with the UNCCD, And like our EU colleagues, we call on future Gender Caucus sessions to focus on the development of a post-2030 Gender Action Plan. It's fitting that we're gathered here in Mongolia, as 2026 is both the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists and the International Year of the Woman Farmer. Canada supports the call for inclusive rangeland management, empowering women pastoralists with legitimate land rights, a voice in decision-making, and access to livestock and natural resources. As the world continues to face issues of food availability and affordability, it should be noted that women produce 60 to 80% of the food grown in developing countries, and yet fewer than one in five landowners is female. Evaluations and case studies show women's economic empowerment and equal land use rights can accelerate efforts in sustainable land management. We cannot achieve land degradation neutrality without gender equality. When women are empowered, entire families and communities benefit.

We congratulate the world's women who show ingenuity and leadership when addressing drought, land degradation, and a scarcity of resources. We are happy to continue to work together for an inclusive future for all.

So I thank the distinguished representative of Canada. And now I will give the floor to the distinguished representative of Panama. And after that is Spain. So Panama, please, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Madam Chair, distinguished delegates. On August 17, Panama co-convened a high-level dialogue.

To provide input and criteria to inform deliberations for developing the next iteration of the GAP. A result of the dialogue, partisan stakeholders noted that the UNCCD GAP requires revision and enhancement to align with the formulation of the future UNCCD strategic framework. There was also a call for synergies between the Rio Conventions, stating the need to align the new UNCCD GAP with the newer gender.

Frameworks of its sister's conventions, notably the UNFCCC's newly adopted Belem Gender Action Plan and the CBD GAP.

Likewise, there is a need to build multi-tiered stakeholder platforms.

It should start by establishing the gender caucus as the steering body to conduct the process while leveraging.

CSOs and partnering with indigenous people and local communities.

It should also ensure intersectional representation, actively recruiting of all men and women to assess shifting social norms and secure proportional representation from smallholder farmers, pastoralists, and women-led agricultural cooperatives.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for your contribution. And now the next one will be Spain, and after Spain, Benin. And so the distinguished representative of Spain, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Excellencies, delegations, civil society. Spain aligns with the EU statements and reiterates its support to the items on the agenda, including the gender perspective and inclusion of the gender perspective, mainstreaming the gender perspective. As expressed by a number of parties during this and previous COPs, the presentations that we have heard in this gender caucus point to the crucial role of women in sustainable land management and underline the importance of ensuring security and land tendency and effective participation in decision making processes women. key within change to strengthen resilience to drought and move towards land degradation neutrality. The future of the convention must include a cross-cutting gender perspective in all topics. A new gender action plan must be developed in line with the future strategic framework of the convention, including specific gender indicators that reflect intersectionality. We request that the Secretariat ensure that future sessions of the gender caucus focus on development of the gender action plan. However, as the European Union has already stated within its statement, the importance and the mainstreaming of this issue us to ensure that gender be treated as a substantive part of the agenda as has been the usual practice to ensure full equal implementation of the Convention. Spain maintains its full commitment to progress in gender equality within the Convention and has made a voluntary contribution for that purpose to ensure development of the current gender action plan and its activities. Thank you.

Thank you for the contribution of Spain. And now the next one is Benin. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Chairperson. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, we wish to emphasize that Gender equality and empowerment of women are preconditions for an effective implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. In many communities, women are on the front line in addressing the consequences of land degradation and droughts. They therefore play a crucial role in food production, natural resource management, land restoration, food security, and communities drought resilience. It would be a paradox were we not to take into account the difficulties they face in access to resources, financing, land information, technologies, and decision-making spaces in certain areas of the world. Madam Chairperson, within the implementation of our convention, various studies have shown that in many communities, the impact of drought and land degradation have gender-specific impacts. And issues relating to land ownership and land use are very different from one region to another, particularly in Africa. They are intimately linked to cultural and religious aspects. However, the Convention is a framework for exchange. This must make it possible to strengthen consistency between our decisions and national implementation. We are ready to seek a formulation that takes into account different sensitivities and national circumstances. This flexibility in language must not, however, lead to backsliding in terms of commitments already undertaken. Our goal is not to create new divisions, or to oppose gender equality to development priorities. On the contrary, we wish to carry out consensual action within our operational language geared towards results. This must be acceptable to all parties while preserving the ambitions of the convention to achieve land degradation neutrality. And thus we propose focusing on four priorities, namely access to natural resources, significant participation of women and men, rights and access to land and natural resources and implementation is adapted to national circumstances and local realities. We uphold the commitments already collectively adopted and are ready to seek consensus-based language. We wish to ensure that nobody is left behind. Restoring land is restoring hope and restoring hope is ensuring that men and women.

So thank you very much. And Benin was the last one of the member countries. And now the next ones, UN Women, you see that microphone 293. The floor is yours.

Madam President, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, as a member of the UNCCD Gender Caucus, UN Women is honored to join this important segment. Once again, we would like to thank the Government of Mongolia for hosting us and for its leadership and commitment to gender equality rights and the empowerment of women and girls, including through the feminist foreign policy, which UN Women very much welcomes. Thirty years ago, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action recognized that women are essential environmental actors, leaders, and decision makers. Through its critical area of concern on women and the environment, it called for women's full participation in environmental governance and for policies that recognize and strengthen their role in the sustainable management of natural resources, including land. Today, that call could not be more relevant. Women and girls in all their diversity are not merely stakeholders in the response to desertification, land degradation and drought. They are land stewards, farmers, pastoralists, indigenous knowledge holders, water managers, environmental defenders and leaders. Every day they sustain households, communities and ecosystems while carrying the disproportionate responsibility of unpaid care work and domestic work as environmental pressures intensify and multiply. Yet, they continue to face discrimination in access to land, finance, technology, markets and decision making. These inequalities not only undermine gender equality, they undermine our collective ability to restore land, build resilience and achieve sustainable development. When their rights, equal opportunities and real decision-making power are secured, food security and nutrition improves, communities become more resilient and recovery becomes more sustainable. As the UNCCD advances a new strategic framework and the preparation of a successor Gender-Equal Action Plan, we must meet ambition with action that reflects the realities women and girls face. It must be matched by comprehensive women's land rights and tenure security, women's equal access to finance and technology, protection for women environmental human rights defenders, meaningful leadership for indigenous pastoralists and local community women and girls, and gender parity in decision-making. UN Women reiterates that the Gender Action Plan and its roadmap remains the foundation and the commitment on which this work must continue. Beyond COP17, UN Women remains committed to working with all parties and partners to ensure that gender equality, women's and girls' rights and their empowerment remain central to the Convention's future directions and the achievement of its objectives. Thank you.

Thank you. We have been quite rapid. So the next NGO is the organization Landesa, and I just give the help for the technical seated at the microphone 309. Please, the floor is yours.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair, distinguished delegates. On behalf of the civil society, indigenous people, local communities, women and youth-led organizations, we welcome the progress through decision 25 from COP16, the gender action plan and its roadmap and the gender caucus. Yet the gap between commitments and implementations remain wide and commitments themselves are under threat at COP17. Women and girls in all their diversity continue to face barriers to land, water and resource rights, finance and decision-making. We call upon parties to first guarantee women's full and effective participation in leadership at all levels. Women must have power to shape decisions on land and tenure, restoration, land degradation neutrality, drought, livelihood, mobility and displacement. The gender action plan and its roadmap must integrate into national policies, budgets, implementation, monitoring and reporting while strengthening the gender caucus as a mechanism for participation and accountability. Second, secure women's rights to land, territories and natural resources, including access, use, ownership and control and governance while respecting collective rights and customary rights. Indigenous women's free and prior informed consent rights must be fully realized. Pastoralist women must be recognized as right holders, knowledge holders and decision makers, including in land governance and mobility, grazing and water resources. Third, address gender-based violence and protect women, environmental human rights, and land defenders. Parties must prevent and respond violence, harassment, criminalization, and ensure accessible gender-responsive survival centers, grievance, and remedy mechanism. Fourth, ensure finance delivers rights and gender equality. Public, private, and blended finance must include robust human rights and gender responsive safeguard, due diligence, transparency, accountability. Finance must also be direct, accessible, predictable and sustainable for local aid action, particularly initiative-led indigenous and local community women, including youth. Fifth, gender commitments require institutional capacity and resources. We regret the absence of dedicated gender officer within the UNFCCD secretariat and the declining budget allocated for gender. This is worrying, gender commitment cannot advance without dedicated expertise and adequate predictable resources. Finally, make gender equality measurable and accountable in the future UNCCD strategic framework.

So thank you for your contribution. And now we have also the member countries again. The next one to speak is Australia. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair. And it's a pleasure to participate in the Gender Caucus. Apologies, I could not hear the whole discussion. It has been a very busy COP and I've been busy in the negotiations. Firstly, I just wanted to say that the Gender Caucus is a very important platform to share expertise, knowledge and experiences to guide the gender responsive implementation of the Convention. We welcome the inclusion of the Gender Caucus session on the importance of addressing women and girls in rangelands. The ecosystem services of rangelands are integral to the wellbeing of women and girls all around the world, providing tangible resources, maintaining cultural practices, traditional ecological knowledge, and sustaining livelihoods. Supporting gender-responsive action is crucial for the successful implementation of the UNCCD's work program and ensuring more equitable, long-term sustainable outcomes. Australia supports the full implementation of the UNCCD's Gender Action Plan, and we thank the UNCCD Secretariat for their work in progressing gender equality and integrating gender-responsive approaches in the implementation of the Convention. We also strongly support the initiatives to fund women delegates and to provide training for women negotiators. We've heard this has been really successful and ensures that women negotiators and their voices are heard in UNCCD decision-making processes and negotiations. we want to continue to hear those voices of women, not just here at COP17 and in the COP17 decisions, but as we move towards our future COPs. Australia also thanks Switzerland for their support on the gender caucus and through the WOCAT initiative. And we call on future gender caucuses sessions to focus on the development of a post-2030 gender action plan and also to consider the work done by the intergovernmental working group to develop the post-2030 strategic framework. I'm proud to be sort of representing the WEOG and Just Cans group on the IWG for the future strategic framework, and we are certainly keen to ensure the voices and views of women and girls, indigenous peoples, local communities, civil society organisations are heard through that work on the future strategic framework. Australia is committed to gender equality. We appreciate the opportunity to participate today in the gender caucus session and we look forward to continuing to engage.

So you know the mics. So thank you very much, Australia. And the next one is United Nations Development Program, UNDP, seated at the microphone 2A2, please. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, partners. I thank the UNCCD Gender Caucus, UNCCD Secretariat and COP Presidency under the Government of Mongolia for convening this event. UNDP is proud to be celebrating 50 years in Mongolia this year. Thank you for your longstanding partnership, and let me acknowledge and appreciate your commitment and leadership on gender equality and women's empowerment, along with the parties and partners here today calling for full implementation of the UNCCDs Gender Action Plan and a path to an enhanced GAP. As we have heard so clearly today from the rich and insightful panel discussion, women pastoralists and herders are on the front lines of our planetary crisis, shouldering the burdens of land degradation, biodiversity loss, resource explanation immediately every day and with long-term effects on prosperity, wellbeing, and resilience. This recognition is at the heart of the Kathmandu Declaration and its specific recommendations, which we acknowledge and stand ready to support. UNDP has supported sustainable landscape management through the recognition of the vital role of pastoralists for more than two decades, showing that their land use and production systems is indeed an efficient way of harnessing the natural resource of the world's rangelands. At the same time, gender equality and women's rights have been shown very clearly to be a strategic enabler of climate, biodiversity, land and resilience outcomes. In our work with countries, UNDP has seen women's relationships to rangelands defined by a persistent paradox. They fulfill diverse and increasingly expanding roles, including as innovative solution holders, leaders in their communities, environmental defenders, biodiversity stewards, community mediators, and peace builders, as we have heard so clearly today from the panelists. all while being systematically excluded from the governance decisions that shape the resources they depend on and steward. Yet there are solutions in place across regions and diverse rangelands landscapes such as Angola, Colombia, India, Lebanon, Mongolia, Somalia, Uruguay, that center women pastoralists' traditional knowledge, prioritize their full and equitable participation in value chains and enterprises, and redesign governance structures to women's leadership and authority foundational. For UNDP, our environment work with the ambition of our gender equality strategy is a vehicle for integration and transformation, recognizing that accelerating gender equality is one of our surest paths for sustainable environment and development outcomes. Thank you again, and let us work together to deliver on this essential agenda.

Thank you, thank you UNDP. And the next before will be to Afpath speaking on behalf of the Indigenous Peoples Caucus and for the techniques city that the microphone 311. And then this is now last in our list that if you have a strong will that you would like to speak, you do during this speech contribution. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I speak on behalf of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum at the UNCCD. We thank the Gender Caucus for centering the leadership of indigenous and pastoralist women in this International Year of Ranchland and Pastoralism. We affirm that many of the world pastoralists and indigenous people and women within our communities are right holders whose stewardship, mobility and collective governance have sustained dry land long before our ancestral system were recognized as models of resilience. We cannot discuss land restoration and drought resilience at COP17 while ignoring the women and the people who have protected our land since time immemorial. For indigenous women pastoralists, land is our home, identity, culture, food system, and future. Our lands are threatened by rising seas, drought, land degradation, and deforestation. risking the disappearance of our land and island, leaving future generations without a home, placing our identity, culture and collective survival at risk. Indigenous women continue to be structurally marginalised and discriminated against, and this must end. Drought, land degradation, desertification, water scarcity, loss of grazing lands and resource competition are placing increasing burden on indigenous pastoralist women and girls. COP17 must put us at the centre of land restoration and drought resolution. We urge party to one, protect collective land, grazing and resource rights from fencing, conversion and land grabbing and disposition. Two, recognize indigenous women knowledge as living science essential to restoration and drought resilience. We are not for law. Three, provide direct access and equitable financing to indigenous and pastoralist women-led organization and initiative. Four, protect indigenous women and girls from all forms of violence linked to drought, land degradation, resource competition and displacement. The Conmanto Declaration and 15 years of mobilization since Mera remind us that recognition without rights remain incomplete for this reason we regret the deletion of agenda item 8A at this COP and we call on parties to ensure the meaningful effective and self-determined participation of indigenous and.

Thank you very much for your contribution. And now the next one is the representative of Eswatini. And after that Sudan and now the list is closed. Okay, Eswatini. Yeah, the Eswatini is now next to speak. And so the Sudan And the secretary had said that then we'll be the of one more and then we go to the east. Anyway, Eswatini, the floor is yours. We try to check it out after that. Eswatini, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The discussion today resonates strongly with our experience in Eswatini. Women are deeply involved in agriculture, natural resource management, and community level responses to drought. They are mainly responsible for water, food production and household resilience, while also contributing to conservation and restoration. Yet they continue to face barriers in access to land, finance, technology and decision making. Recent UN analysis in Eswatini notes that fewer than 20% of women own land and customary systems are mainly responsible in limiting women's independent access to land. We are also seeing the impacts of climate change, variability and drought directly affecting women farmers. Therefore, our message is simple. We need to move from recognition to implementation. This means strengthening women's land and tenure rights. providing access to finance and technology, strengthening extension services, ensuring that women have meaningful influence in decisions concerning the land and resources they manage. And importantly, women should not only be invited into women's spaces, their voices and priorities must be reflected at local, national, regional, and global levels of governance. If we invest in women's rights, leadership, knowledge, and economic empowerment, we are investing directly in land destruction, drought resilience, food security, and sustainable communities. As Swatini recognizes that gender cuts across the entire UNCCD agenda, it is relevant to drought, land degradation, restoration, rainlands, biodiversity, livelihoods and resilience. Its cross-casting nature does not mean that gender loses its visibility. We therefore encourage gender to remain a visible item on the COP agenda while also being mainstreamed across all relevant areas of our work. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for your contribution. Now you have been very, very quick. The next one is Sudan. The floor is yours.

In the name of God, most compassionate, most merciful. May God's peace and blessings be upon you all. Ladies and gentlemen, dear delegates, thank you for allowing me to take the floor. Pastoralism in Sudan is one of the most important livelihoods, especially in arid and semi-arid lands. And we rely on pastoralism as an economic sector. Pastoralist communities face increasing challenges due to the LDD. as well as displacement, migration and scarcity of water. Agriculture is also one of the main sectors of income and in rural areas we rely on rain and on.

Other issues?

Sudanese women play a very important role in rural areas, not only when it comes to domestic work, they take care of their livestock, they sell their products, they manage natural resources, and they preserve local and traditional knowledge. Despite all these important tasks and this important role, women challenges when it comes to access to land, finance, technology, extension services and decision making. Promoting the participation and leadership of women should also facilitate food security as well as livelihoods and drought resilience and resilience to climate change. Sudan reiterates the importance of the empowerment of rural women and promoted their participation into decision making as well as securing their equitable access to, uh, land, um, finance, technology and resources. Gender equality should not be limited to an item inserted into international reports. It should be part of national and government institutions, plans, plans of actions, and part of the monitoring. This requires us to integrate women needs, namely women pastoralists and women in local communities and young girls into the restoration plans and desertification plans. That's why we need to secure their effective participation at local, regional and international levels of decision making. Thank you.

Thank you. And as I said, when I said that the list is closed, you were very quick. And now after Sudan is still Uganda, but that's the you are the last speaker. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen. Uganda recognizes that achieving land degradation neutrality and building resilient communities cannot be achieved without addressing gender inequalities. Women and girls in pastoral communities are essential actors in livestock production, natural resource management, food security, and preservation of indigenous knowledge. Yet they often have unequal access to land, livestock, finance, markets, technology, and information for decision making. Uganda is taking steps to strengthen women participation and resilience through support for livestock health, pasture and fodder management, livelihood diversification, women economic empowerment, and economic and community-based approaches to climate adaptation. Uganda believes that women herders should be recognized not only as beneficiaries, but as leaders and knowledge holders in sustainable land management. But we need to focus on participation and leadership, access to resources, gender responsive finance and capacity building, knowledge.

Data and accountability.

We need to better.

We need better gender disaggregated data to measure women's contribution and ensure that national programs and UN.

NCCD interventions respond to their specific needs and priorities.

Uganda therefore encourages the convention parties and government partners to move from recognition to investment, from consultation to meaningful participation, and from policy commitments to measurable actions. Uganda remains committed to working with all parties and partners to advance this agenda thank you Madam chair.

I will thank uh Uganda for for her contribution and uh we succeeded the the whole list so we have now heard the last speaker in the interactive segment for this gender caucus and I would like to thank warmly all all participants for their contributions I'm sure we will see you also in the future And now I once again thank you and I will say that now I have the honor to hand the meeting back to the COP17 president. Now the floor is yours.

I would like to thank the chair, Her Excellency Tarja-Karin Halonen, former president of Finland, for expertly guiding the discussions during the gender caucus. I also thank all panelists and all participants for their active engagement in the deliberations. Distinguished delegates, we have concluded our program of work for this meeting. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the interpreters for the extension granted. Information on the programme for COP17 and related meetings is available on the conference website and on the UNCCD app. The meeting is adjourned.