A Conversation with Carnegie Ethics Fellow Ruth Nashipae Muigai

Was there a moment that made you interested in ethics in your professional or personal life?

My earliest lessons in ethics did not come from classrooms. They came from my family, growing up in sub-Saharan Africa, where ethical behavior was modeled daily through discipline and the quiet affirmation of what was considered right. From a young age, I developed a strong internal compass.

That clarity began to fracture in my teenage years. Growing up within the Maasai community, I was confronted with practices that were culturally accepted and even defended, yet deeply unsettling to me. Female genital mutilation and early marriage were among them. These practices were justified through tradition and reinforced by patriarchal norms. I struggled to reconcile how something so widely accepted could feel so profoundly unjust. It was during this period that a defining realization took hold: Popularity does not confer moral legitimacy.

That insight shaped the direction of my life. I pursued law not merely to understand legal systems, but to challenge unjust norms and transform them. I went on to earn a Master’s degree in human rights law and international law at the University of East London under a Commonwealth Scholarship. This gap between law and lived reality became central to my ethical inquiry. I wanted to understand how norms actually change, how difficult ethical conversations are navigated, how compromises are made, and how solutions emerge within complex political and social contexts. My work took me into academia, lecturing at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa, and later into public service, where I trained government officials at the Kenya School of Government. Over time, one lesson became clear: Awareness alone does not lead to action.

To affect meaningful change, I found it necessary to engage power directly. I was elected deputy secretary general of a political party, working on gender equality, human rights enforcement, and policy accountability. That path later led to my appointment by a former president as a director of a state corporation, making me the youngest woman in the history of the Kenya Animal Genetics Center to hold such a position. Subsequently, I served on boards of organizations whose objectives were to advance human rights in Africa.

These roles taught me that ethical progress is rarely straightforward. Resistance is inevitable, setbacks are real. Change demands patience, negotiation, and persistence. My interest in ethics was not sparked by a single moment. It was formed through lived experience at the intersection of culture, injustice, and law. It continues to evolve.

How did you find out about the Carnegie Ethics Fellowship, and why did you think it would be a good fit for you?

I learned about the Carnegie Ethics Fellowship through a LinkedIn message from Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. What caught my attention was not simply the prestige of the program, but its focus on engaging with real-world dilemmas rather than remaining at the level of abstract theory.

That emphasis closely mirrors my own professional path. My work has consistently unfolded at the intersection of law and social change. These spaces where there are ethical questions are rarely neat and almost never theoretical. The Fellowship appeared to offer a structured environment in which to sharpen ethical reasoning while confronting the kinds of tradeoffs and constraints that define decision-making in practice.

Equally compelling was access to Carnegie’s intellectual resources and a global community of Fellows. The prospect of learning alongside practitioners who approach ethics from varied vantage points felt not only enriching but essential. In that sense, the Fellowship did not simply align with my interests. It reflected the way I already engage with ethical questions and promised to deepen that engagement in meaningful ways.

You are the founder and CEO of The Gender Initiative. How did you start this organization, and what are its goals?

The Gender Initiative began as a Mandela Washington Fellowship project. In 2024, I was awarded the fellowship by the U.S. Department of State. My work focused on the intersection of gender, law, and public policy. The organization approaches gender as a legal, social, and governance issue rather than a standalone advocacy concern. Its core mission is to advance gender equality through rigorous research, targeted training, and strategic advocacy.

One of the organization’s flagship projects is the 50 Femicide Report 2024–2025, an in-depth review of 50 femicide cases in Kenya. The report documents the lives of 50 women, the circumstances of their deaths, and the systemic breakdowns that followed. It examines the social drivers of violence, gaps in legal enforcement, and the often-overlooked mental health dimensions surrounding these cases.

The objective is not simply to document harm, but to demand accountability. By humanizing statistics and grounding policy debates in lived experience, The Gender Initiative seeks to inform reform and push the state to confront gender-based violence with the urgency it requires.

You work extensively on gender equality and climate issues and are currently pursuing a Master of Laws in environmental law. What connections between these fields are often overlooked?

The link between gender equality and climate change is not a mere correlation. It is a relationship of causation, specifically, compounding harm through law, power, and access to resources. Yet too often the global conversation reduces women to passive victims in need of protection. That framing is not only inaccurate but also dangerous. It obscures the reality that climate change is a gendered crisis shaped by legal structures and political priorities. It also obscures the potential of women to lead the solutions that will determine whether communities survive or collapse.

I grew up in Kajiado, Kenya, a dry semi-arid region where the climate crisis is not an abstract threat. When the rains fail, the burden of survival falls disproportionately on women and girls. Water becomes a commodity, not a right. Food becomes a ration, not a guarantee. And institutions that should protect women and girls collapse under the pressure of scarcity.

Yet international law and climate policy often treat gender as an add-on, a box to be ticked rather than a structural lens through which the crisis must be understood. The UNFCCC’s Gender Action Plan has repeatedly been criticized for lacking concrete financing and enforcement mechanisms, even as it highlights the need to integrate gender into climate action. The reality is that climate impacts do not fall evenly because vulnerability is not distributed evenly. Vulnerability is engineered through law and policy. This can be seen when women are denied land rights, excluded from decision-making, or left out of national budgets that prioritize industrial development over social protection.

The CEDAW Committee’s General Recommendation No 37 is explicit: Climate change intensifies practices such as child marriage, gender-based violence, and the denial of girls education and reproductive rights. This is not theoretical. In 2023 and 2024, reports from the Horn of Africa and the Sahel documented rising early marriage as families sought to reduce household costs in the face of drought and crop failure. The logic is brutal but simple. When survival is uncertain, girls become a form of currency. Climate collapse accelerates gender oppression.

Another overlooked connection is that women are excluded from the table where climate law is made. Climate policy is shaped by ministries of energy, finance, and infrastructure. Women are frequently absent from those spaces. Even when women are present, their perspectives are treated as secondary to technical and economic considerations. Yet climate law is not only about emissions. It is about land rights, access to finance, migration, disaster response, and governance of natural resources.

Recent developments at COP29 in Baku underscored the centrality of gender to climate action. Parties extended the Enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender for another decade and agreed to develop a new Gender Action Plan for COP30. The decisions recognized women as key beneficiaries of climate finance and essential agents of adaptation, resource management, and just transitions. Yet these victories coexist with persistent challenges: funding gaps, implementation weaknesses, and concerns over women’s representation in governance structures. Initial critiques of an all-male COP29 organizing committee highlighted the ongoing structural barriers that keep women from shaping the policies meant to protect them.

The overlooked connection is clear: Climate justice is gender justice. Climate change is the outcome of unequal power relations between countries and industries. Gender inequality is the outcome of unequal power within communities and institutions. Where these intersect, the result is an ecological and social crisis. As I pursue my Master of Laws in environmental law, my commitment is to bridge this gap. Making contributions to ensuring that climate law not only mitigates emissions but dismantles structural inequities and recognizing women as central architects of change.

What have you learned about ethics and leadership in the Fellowship that you’ve brought back to your professional life?

One of the most valuable lessons has been an honest reckoning with the cost of ethics. Ethical leadership often requires tradeoffs, strategic compromise, and patience. Timing matters. How an issue is framed can determine whether it advances or stalls.

I’ve also learned the importance of communication styles and consistency of meeting people where they are, without losing sight of my core principles. Ethics is not about moral purity; it is about sustained engagement, negotiation, and the discipline to keep showing up, even when progress feels incremental. Those lessons have directly shaped how I approach leadership.

Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs is an independent and nonpartisan nonprofit. The views expressed within this article are those of the Fellow and do not necessarily reflect the position of Carnegie Council.