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 write as organizations committed to gender justice and women’s rights to share observations and recommendations regarding the draft ‘An Act Establishing a War and Economic Crimes Court for Liberia’ (Draft Statute), developed by the Office for the Establishment of War and Economic Crimes Court for Liberia (OWECC-L).

‘Defining women exclusively in their role as ​“mothers” strips them of their full, diverse identities and humanity, reduces women to their reproductive role, and reinforces the patriarchal gender stereotypes that drive violence and discrimination against women and girls. It also reinforces these stereotypes by solely focusing on women’s experience of ​“motherhood” to the exclusion of their other varied identities, characteristics and roles in societies.

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.

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.

In March 2026, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (the Court) issued a landmark judgment in Ramos Durand et al. v. Peru, holding Peru responsible for the forced sterilization and death of Celia Edith Ramos Durand. The case was brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights, DEMUS–Study for the Defense of Women’s Rights, and the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL). Global Justice Center submitted an amicus curiae brief in the case, with Debevoise & Plimpton acting as pro bono counsel, articulating the importance of specifically recognizing reproductive violence.

The Draft Addendum makes welcome contributions to recognizing a fuller scope of conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence (GBV), acknowledging that “conflict-related gender violence is no longer confined to acts purely sexual in nature” and includes many forms, including physical, moral, psychological and transgenerational forms of violence.

Reproductive autonomy is an individual’s ability to exercise agency over their fertility, including their choice about whether and in what circumstances to reproduce. It is inseparable from human dignity and bodily autonomy, and its violation has profound physical, psychological, social, and economic consequences for affected individuals, families, and communities. Rights related to reproductive autonomy are protected in international and regional human rights instruments.