At climate talks in Bonn this week, the Mexican delegation led a push for the United Nations (UN) to clamp down on harassment and intimidation at climate talks, winning support and concessions.

The Mexican delegation, which is dominated by young women, spoke up strongly against the “difficult experience” they said they experienced at the Cop27 climate talks in Egypt last November.

Their campaign for reforms gathered momentum throughout the two-week talks in Bonn and resulted in UN Climate Change head Simon Stiell closing the talks by saying that “harassment, be it in the form of sexism, bullying or sexual harassment is not acceptable”.

It also resulted in governments agreeing to make host agreements between the UN and the hosts of the annual Cop talks public, to encourage strong measures to protect delegates.

Battle against powerful men

On Tuesday, the head of Mexico’s delegation Camila Zepeda told a side event in Bonn that her delegation “were among the many that had to suffer quite a difficult experience at Cop27”.

Without going into details, she said “we made official complaints on all these situations that were happening and we were not addressed and we were not taken care of”.

She said that lots of countries which are “usually very vocal about [human rights], here they stand quiet” and “we end up being the only ones left in the room, holding this battle against these very powerful men”.

She later accused the heads of the European Union and US delegations of only supporting her when she went to the press.

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When she complained about sexual harassment, Zepeda said that one party had told her there is sexual harassment all over the world.

“Am I going to take for granted that – because I get sexually harassed all over the world – that I get sexually harassed here,” she asked, “it’s just absolutely ridiculous”.

Climate talks have been plagued by sexual harassment since their beginning with Pakistani negotiator Meera Ghani and climate lawyer Farhana Yamin among those speaking out about their harassment.

Intimidation of journalists

The next day, 35-year-old Argentine journalist Tais Gadea Lara complained to the Cop27 presidency about intimidation at the summit in Sharm el-Sheikh.

Sitting around a meeting table in Bonn with other journalists, she told Cop27 ambassador Wael Aboulmagd that the Cop in Egypt was “one of the most difficult Cops to work in”.

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She told him that whenever she set up her tripod to film reports, four or five men with technical support badges had surrounded her in an attempt to intimidate her. In one case – Gadea Lara said – they turned off the lights when she was recording late at night without many people around.

Aboulmagd said he was “sorry to hear that”, he didn’t know who the men were and the Cop27 presidency had received several complaints and “had reacted”. He told Gadea Lara the best thing was to report in detail what happened to the authorities.

Later, Gadea Lara told Climate Home that a woman from the Egyptian delegation had approached her after she had asked the Cop presidency a question about phasing out fossil fuels. The woman looked at her name badge, wrote on a piece of paper and said thank you, Lara said.

She said she felt “intimidated because she neither introduced herse