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Women raise their voices against tree plantations

By Friends of the Earth International

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OVERVIEW

The European Union has signed a number of treaties and conventions and developed a major body of legislation aimed at achieving gender equality. For the European Union (EU), "Equality between women and men is a fundamental right, a common value of the EU, and a necessary condition for the achievement of the EU objectives of growth, employment and social cohesion." While inequalities between men and women still persist in EU member states, at least some conditions have been created to advance towards making gender equality a reality. However, the issue of the equality of rights between men and women seems to lose -in practice- its importance for the EU outside its borders. As the concrete cases analyzed in this document show, European Union consumption levels,policies and corporations are playing a major role in disempowering women in countries of the South. This is being done through the conversion of local ecosystems and farmlands used to grow food crops into monoculture plantations of different species of trees, such as eucalyptus, oil palm and rubber trees.