As the WPS agenda moves into its next quarter century and the United Nations prepares for a new Secretary-General in 2027, the WPS agenda will benefit from more consistent, explicit attention to reproductive violence as a distinct harm. This will improve recognition of victims; enable more effective response and prevention efforts; ensure more comprehensive documentation, justice, accountability, and reparations measures; and reduce barriers to participation in public life, including peacemaking, for reproductive violence victims. Greater acknowledgement and integration of reproductive violence in conflict is therefore an essential tool for fulfilling the WPS agenda’s goals of preventing, addressing, and remedying the gendered consequences of conflict and expanding women’s participation in conflict prevention, peacemaking, and peacebuilding.

We, the undersigned representatives of civil society organizations in the United States, condemn the U.S. for its persistent non-cooperation with the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, and urge you to take meaningful action within your mandate to prevent the attempted dismantling of the universality of a core pillar of the UN Human Rights Council.

Amici submit this brief to explain the irreparable harm that this Order causes. It advances two arguments. First, the fracturing of civil society resulting from the Order impairs the functioning of the ICC. CSOs and human rights defenders, who are comprised of, to name a few, lawyers, victim representatives, and survivor advocates, are not peripheral advocates for the ICC; rather, they are critical to the functioning of the ICC. The ICC was designed to depend on them to connect with victims and witnesses; document crimes; monitor judicial developments; support victim participation and reparations; contribute legal, contextual, cultural and other expertise; and advance cooperation and domestic accountability, particularly in situation countries where the Court has limited access.

Restrictions on abortion and laws that criminalize the provision of abortion related services, information, education, and support can violate a wide range of human rights, including the rights to life, health, privacy, nondiscrimination, freedom from torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Abortion restrictions can also infringe on individuals’ right to freedom of religion, conscience, and belief (FRCB), yet such claims have been under developed in human rights circles. To the extent that FRCB claims have gained traction within national courts and human rights bodies, the analysis has predominantly focused on conscience-based refusals of abortion care that often lead to denials of reproductive healthcare. Less attention has been paid to the actions of seeking, providing and/or supporting abortion care when those actions are grounded in one’s religion, conscience, or belief.

We recommend that the General Recommendation include more specificity in Section A and throughout (as described in detail below), on the role of reproductive capacity in shaping and entrenching gender stereotypes.

In 2022, Michigan’s citizens went to the polls to make their voices heard on an issue of systemic constitutional importance: the right of a woman to terminate her pregnancy. By a wide margin, Michigan’s citizens voted to enact the Reproductive Freedom for All Amendment (“RFFA”), an amendment to Michigan’s Constitution that eliminates outdated restrictions on reproductive healthcare and protects the fundamental right to reproductive freedom in Michigan, including the freedom for Michiganders to decide to end their pregnancies. The RFFA ensures that Michiganders have “the right to make and effectuate decisions about all matters relating to pregnancy,” including “abortion care,” without the State of Michigan “discriminat[ing] in the protection or enforcement of this fundamental right.”

As the United States ("US") approaches its rescheduled 4th Universal Periodic Review ("UPR"), individuals’ sexual and reproductive health and rights (“SRHR”) continue to deteriorate across the country. Since our previous submission, both restrictions on reproductive healthcare access, in particular abortion care, and targeted, state-sanctioned violence, intimidation, discrimination, and harassment of communities by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) and Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) have increased. This submission updates this coalition’s April 2025 submission. It includes quantitative research and qualitative data gathered from abortion funds, healthcare providers, doulas, and persons detained or deported by ICE agents. Testimony is from individuals who have been directly harmed by restrictive abortion laws and/or by the recent unlawful changes in and enforcement of immigration policies or from individuals whose clients or patients have suffered such harm.