Sep 1, 2025

María Fernanda Espinosa: Translating Local Wisdom into Global Policy

From “GWL Voices at Beijing 1995: Stories of Leadership, Legacy, and Change” listed and/or read the full interview with Ms. María Fernanda Espinosa thirty years after the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, 1995. Ms. Espinosa is GWL Voices Executive Director, and first woman from Latin America and the Caribbean to be President of the United Nations General Assembly (2018-2019). During the Fourth World Conference on Women she was working in Ecuador to amplify the voices of indigenous women and ensure their perspectives shaped the Beijing agenda.

1. Looking back to 1995, how did your work with indigenous women in Ecuador shape your approach to leadership in international diplomacy?

I think that, first of all, it gave a perspective of the importance of multilevel leadership and what each space and scale can bring to the global conversation—and vice versa, how the global conversation can feed into local struggles and local agendas. Looking at how the Beijing Conference was organized, and how to bring the wise voices of indigenous women of the Great Amazon, was quite a challenge because they didn’t understand the so-called feminist movement or the women’s rights movement at the time, and did not connect very well with the agendas of indigenous women. The issues, for example voting rights or sexual and reproductive health rights, were very distant from their daily lives, and their priorities were very different and culturally adapted.

So that really shaped the way I understood global diplomacy. I also understood that indigenous women and community-level agendas and political agendas can really enrich and feed global agendas. That helped me a great deal when being in more multilateral global positions, to really look for the wisdom at the very local level, but also culturally different perspectives, and the issues also of the common good and collective actions—because I learned that their way of living was collective, and I think that has also enriched the global agenda in big ways. For example, the concept of common goods, of collective actions, of cooperation, of solidarity—that is how I learned in real lives.

2. How can organizations strengthen the bridge between grassroots movements in Ecuador and global decision-making spaces?

At the time, I have to say that the Amazon, in general, was a geography that attracted a lot of international attention. Indigenous peoples of the Amazon were seen as the protectors of the forest, the environmentalists at heart. So there was a projection between that agenda and, to some extent, the international environmental rights movement globally. I think that really helped. But at the end of the day, it was extremely shapeful, as I shaped my career to understand the impact of local practices, knowledge, wisdom, and cultural perspectives on how these enriched multilateral architecture.

At the same time, what was happening at the global level could really improve the lives of people on the ground. I also knew and understood that weaving across the scales—bottom-up or top-down—had to be intentional, political, and choreographed, because it doesn’t happen naturally. And, of course, that has a political content, because how we stand in the international scene reflects whether we embrace values and incorporate local priorities. Thirty years ago in Beijing, the vision of indigenous women of the Amazon was a novelty. Even the delegation that flew to Beijing—most of them had never been to the capital of Ecuador. To think of them going to Beijing was very symbolic and very important: for the communities, for women’s leadership in the Ecuadorian Amazon, and for indigenous women overall.

Their physical presence in Beijing mattered. They were considered and respected as global players, as women with a loud voice, with great wisdom, and with much to contribute to the global agenda. But to make that happen, you need to weave across the scales—it doesn’t happen naturally. That has informed and guided my career throughout: it really happens, but you have to build it intentionally, creating the mechanisms and the structures.

At that time, of course, the Permanent Forum of Indigenous Peoples at the UN did not exist. We did not yet have the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Mechanisms like FIMI did not exist. So I think these were the seeds we planted for the explosion and strengthening of the indigenous women’s movement around the world. In that sense, knowing a bit about the history of indigenous women globally, Amazonian women helped a great deal to position their voice and leadership.

What do you see as the most urgent challenges facing women’s roles in global leadership today, and how can your experience from Beijing 1995 help shape the future for the next generation?

In general terms, the women’s right agenda, we always say and repeat that, the women’s agenda is not only about women’s issues, it is about everything that happens in the world and if we connect for example what are the challenges of today. The challenges of today for example are the climate crises, arm conflict, violence, the new technologies and the digital divide, care and the care economy. All of these agenda has to embrace and incorporate in a cross-cutting way the women's rights agenda.

It is not just women caring about their world or their immediate environment or their immediate rights, but caring about the world and when you translate that in the multilateral space then you see, first of all how much women are underrepresented in leadership in general throughout the scale and ladder from the local to the global, how women sometimes are neglected, in terms of policy, in terms of investment, in terms of political participation, but at the same time you can also see and track how important the voices, the agency and the contribution of women have been not only in the local space but globally, when you look for example in the climate space, the loud voice and the wake-up calls have come many times from the voices of indigenous women, from women overall, you see the big and strong voices internationally in climate, there are some many women in climate.

You see when there is international acknowledgement in people that have really made strides in transforming the world from Malala to Mariana Resa, the list of women laureates that are leading a footprint and they are making transformation happen.

And there again, because of my personal history, the voices of indigenous women have moved the needle, not only in indigenous rights but in the multilateral agenda and if you look at the explosion on the issue of care, this translates very differently in the spaces of indigenous women.

If you look at the voices advocating for more fairness and equality.