Liberia’s support for key recommendations received during its fourth UPR cycle is a significant and welcome step toward at last delivering justice for serious international crimes during the country’s civil wars. These include recommendations aimed at the establishment and effective functioning of a war and economic crimes court and full implementation of the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations.

Our coalition recently developed a joint submission to the UN Human Rights Council before the USA’s upcoming 4th Universal Periodic Review. This submission focused on the significant deterioration of sexual and reproductive rights and justice across the country since the elimination of a federal right to abortion and amid a broader undermining of rights in the USA.

Widespread and systematic violations of international human rights and humanitarian law characterized Liberia’s two brutal armed conflicts, which took place between 1989 and 2003. Liberian men, women, and children were gunned down in their homes, marketplaces, and places of worship. In a few cases hundreds of civilians were massacred in a matter of hours. Girls and women were subjected to horrific sexual violence3 including gang rape, sexual slavery, and torture. Children were abducted from their homes and schools and pressed into service, often after witnessing the murder of their parents. The violence blighted the lives of tens of thousands of civilians and displaced almost half the population.

Idaho’s “Defense of Life Act” (“Act” or “Idaho’s Law”), a near-total abortion ban, restricts access to necessary emergency reproductive healthcare, exacerbating preventable maternal mortality and morbidity and otherwise negatively impacting pregnant people. The law’s narrow exception for life-saving care will not prevent or mitigate these harms and will leave patients without access to emergency reproductive healthcare. The United States has ratified several human rights treaties that require it to guarantee access to safe and legal reproductive health services, in particular in emergencies or acute medical crises governed by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (“EMTALA”). Under these treaties, the U.S. is required to respect, protect and fulfil the rights to life; freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment; non-discrimination; and privacy. Idaho’s draconian abortion law fails to respect these rights and violates the U.S.’s treaty obligations. This violation of the U.S.’s treaty obligations militates in favor of affirming the preliminary injunction issued by the District Court. Causing the U.S. to violate its international obligations will result in irreparable harm and is not in the public interest.

On October 17-18 in Geneva, the United States government faced questions from civil society and the Human Rights Committee on the country’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). In addition to questions on immigrants’ rights, racial discrimination, and more, US officials were pressed repeatedly on the state of abortion access in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

The June 2022 Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization eliminated federal constitutional protection for access to abortion in the United States. Following Dobbs, more than a dozen states fully banned abortion, and many others passed or proposed increased restrictions. On October 17-18, 2023, the Human Rights Committee will review US compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), including the impact of Dobbs on its human rights obligations.