While European countries — and their historical allies, such as the United Kingdom and Australia — are often the first to champion gender equality, human rights and climate justice in their public statements, the reality inside UNFCCC negotiations reveals a deeply contradictory stance. At COP30, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Australia are explicitly opposing the inclusion of references to people of African descent in the Gender Action Plan, acting to silence and delegitimize legitimate and historically grounded demands.
People of African descent represent approximately 200 million individuals worldwide, according to the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent. Descendants of the victims of the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans — as well as trafficking across the Mediterranean, which included the trade of sub-Saharan African peoples — these populations were forced into diaspora across the Americas and the Caribbean. Brazil hosts the largest population of people of African descent outside the African continent: more than 56% of its population identifies as Black, according to IBGE (2022), totaling more than 120 million people.
This is not the first time the European bloc adopts such a position. At the COP16 on Biodiversity, in Cali, the European Union — silently supported by these same allies — attempted to prevent the inclusion of people of African descent in the final text. The bloc only backtracked after governments and civil society publicly denounced the move as colonialist
and regressive. Now, in the UNFCCC gender agenda, the pattern repeats itself: obstruction, erasure, and refusal to acknowledge people of African descent, under the claim that this is not a collective demand.
According to Geledés – Black Women’s Institute, “once again, people of African descent are being traded away as bargaining chips in international negotiations.” The organization reports that the language guaranteeing recognition and full participation of this population — already negotiated and in an advanced stage — was halted by the refusal of the European Union, the United Kingdom and Australia to allow its inclusion.
“In yet another colonial chapter, these countries are blocking the possibility of guaranteeing rights and recognition to a population historically rendered invisible,” states the organization.
This raises an unavoidable question: why do the European Union, the United Kingdom and Australia — so vocal about human rights and climate justice — refuse to acknowledge precisely those who are most affected by environmental racism, gender inequality and the direct impacts of the climate crisis?
The resistance of these countries reveals far more than a technical position: it exposes the persistence of a colonial logic that continues to shape international relations. And once
again, it shows that gender justice without racial justice is merely rhetoric — rhetoric that continues to benefit the same countries that profit from the climate crisis while denying recognition to people of African descent.