Publications

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.

The undersigned organizations call on the Biden administration to update the United States’ fifth periodic report to the UN Human Rights Committee under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The Committee will be basing its review on this report, which was submitted by the Trump administration on January 15, 2021. This report version lacks updates on existing U.S. policies, as well as a commitment to expand protections for marginalized communities, especially non-citizens, in the context of reproductive health and access to medical care. It is critical — and consistent with the Biden administration’s policy commitments — to address the gaps between current U.S. policies and the ICCPR.

Executive Summary Following the United States (US) Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022, people residing in the US who can become pregnant are facing a human rights crisis. This urgent appeal to United Nations (UN) mandate holders, supported by a coalition of 196 signatories, details these intensifying harms, discusses the ways in which Dobbs contravenes the US’ international obligations, and sets forth calls to action. With the Dobbs decision, the US Supreme Court overturned the constitutionally protected right to access abortion, leaving the question of whether and how to regulate abortion to individual states. Approximately 22 million women and girls of reproductive age in the US now live in states where abortion access is heavily restricted, and often totally inaccessible. The harms of the Dobbs decision detailed in this appeal include: the impact on women’s lives and health; the penalization of healthcare, including criminalization; threats to privacy from increased digital surveillance; infringement on freedom of thought, conscience and religion or belief; and the disproportionate impact on marginalized populations.  By overturning the established constitutional protection for access to abortion and through the passage of state laws, the US is in violation of its obligations under international human rights law, codified in a number of human rights treaties to which it is a party or a signatory. These human rights obligations include, but are not limited to, the rights to: life; health; privacy; liberty and security of person; to be free from torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief; equality and non-discrimination; and to seek, receive, and impart information. The signatories call on the UN mandate holders to take up their calls to action, which include communicating with the US regarding the human rights violations, requesting a visit to the US, convening a virtual stakeholder meeting with US civil society, calls for the US to comply with its obligations under international law, and calls for private companies to take a number of actions to protect reproductive rights.

Dear Ambassador Villegas, The organizations signing this letter write to you, in your capacity as President of the Human Rights Council (HRC), to request that you adopt measures to ensure that a woman is elected for the first time as the next Special Rapporteur on Torture (SRT) and to consider geographical representation in your decision. On July 8th, during the upcoming 50th HRC’s session, you will have the important responsibility of proposing the appointment of several Special Procedure mandate holders, including the next SRT. Created in 1985, the SRT has had a fundamental role in upholding the absolute prohibition of torture, responding to complaints, overseeing conditions of detention throughout the world, and developing fundamental human rights standards and recommendations to promote accountability, reparation and prevention of torture. Yet, none of the 6 experts who have held this role has been a woman, and only one of them has been from the Global South. As concluded by the HRC’s Advisory Committee in the report on gender balance in UN human right bodies presented to the HRC on 21 May, 20211, the lack of gender balance in international bodies not only affects women’s right to equality, but it also erodes the effectiveness of the institutions and limits the range of issues and perspectives that should be part of their legal and political agenda2. In the case of the SRT, this same limitation comes as a consequence of the lack of a Global South perspective in such a fundamental mandate. Read the Full Letter

Excellencies, We, the undersigned civil society organisations, urge you to call for and support an urgent debate at the 50th session of the UN Human Rights Council regarding the women’s rights crisis in Afghanistan. We further urge you to support a resolution responding to this crisis. Since August 2021, when the Taliban took control of the country, there has been an enormous deterioration in the recognition and protection of the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan, including with respect to the rights to non-discrimination, education, work, public participation, health, and sexual and reproductive health. The Taliban has also imposed sweeping restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, association, assembly and movement for women and girls. Afghanistan is now the only country in the world to expressly prohibit girls’ education. In the last few weeks, the situation has worsened dramatically, with a Taliban directive that women and girls must fully cover themselves in public, including their faces, and leave home only in cases of necessity. International investigations, witness testimony and video evidence indicate that women human rights defenders and others protesting against the restrictions and violations have been subject to home invasions, threats, abductions, enforced disappearances, and assaults with electric devices and chemical sprays. Read the Full Letter

We, the undersigned human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs), strongly urge the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) to hold a special session on the ongoing human rights crisis in Ethiopia and to establish a robust investigative mechanism in that context. We urge your delegation to support such action without further delay. On 3 November the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) released a joint report that found evidence of widespread violations of international human rights, humanitarian, and refugee law by all parties to the conflict in Tigray, including the Ethiopian National Defense Forces, Eritrean Defense Forces, the Tigray Defense Forces, and Amhara regional special police and affiliated Fano militias. The report also found that many of these violations and abuses may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The report concluded that “the seriousness of these allegations calls for independent investigations and appropriate prosecution of those responsible,” and said that an international, independent mechanism can be established to collect evidence of the atrocities in preparation for future criminal prosecution. The joint report acknowledges it was not a comprehensive investigation into the crisis in northern Ethiopia and calls for further investigations. OHCHR and the EHRC were unable to visit key sites of massacres, like Axum, which was previously documented and reported on by international NGOs. Moreover, the report was only mandated to investigate abuses that took place from 3 November 2020 to 28 June 2021. The conflict remains ongoing and has spread to neighboring regions, threatening millions more civilians and where serious abuses have now also been documented. Abuses linked to the conflict are also taking place outside of the affected zones, as the High Commissioner reported last week, scores of ethnic Tigrayans have been arbitrarily arrested, including in Addis Ababa, in the last weeks alone. Download the Full Letter

To Permanent Representatives of Member and Observer States of the United Nations Human Rights Council (Geneva, Switzerland) Your Excellency, We, the undersigned human rights non-governmental organizations, strongly urge the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) to adopt a resolution at its upcoming 47th session (HRC47) on the ongoing human rights crisis in Tigray, Ethiopia. Over the last seven months an overwhelming number of reports have emerged of abuses and violations of international humanitarian and human rights law (IHL/IHRL) during the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region. Reports by civil society organizations have detailed widespread massacres, violence against civilians and indiscriminate attacks across Tigray while preliminary analysis by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) indicates that all warring parties have committed abuses that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. There is now ample evidence that atrocities continue to be committed, notably by the Ethiopian National Defense Forces, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, Eritrean Defense Forces, and Amhara regional special police and affiliated Fano militias. These include indiscriminate attacks and direct attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, widespread and mass extrajudicial executions, rape and other sexual violence, forced displacement, arbitrary detentions, including of displaced persons, widespread destruction and pillage of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, factories and businesses, and the destruction of refugee camps, crops and livestock. The Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) on Sexual Violence in Conflict has repeatedly expressed alarm over the widespread and systematic commission of rape and sexual violence in Tigray. On 21 April she stated that women and girls in Tigray are being subjected to sexual violence “with a cruelty that is beyond comprehension,” including gang rape by men in uniform, targeted sexual attacks on young girls and pregnant women, and family members forced to witness these horrific abuses. The SRSG also stated that these reports, coupled with assessments by healthcare providers in the region, indicate that sexual violence is being used as a weapon of war. Download the Full Letter 

To Permanent Representatives of Member and Observer States of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Geneva, Switzerland Your Excellency, We, the undersigned human rights non-governmental organizations, strongly support the call for a UN Human Rights Council (HRC) special session on the deteriorating human rights situation in Ethiopia and urge your delegation to support such a session without further delay. Since 4 November 2020, fighting between federal government forces and affiliated militias with forces and militia allied to Tigray’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, has reportedly killed hundreds of civilians and caused more than one million people to flee their homes, including at least 57,000 refugees who are now in Sudan. There have been widespread reports of serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights violations and abuses including possible atrocity crimes, including indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, unlawful killings, widespread looting, and rape and sexual violence against women and girls. There have also been reports of massacres committed along ethnic lines within Tigray, as well as ethnic profiling, discrimination, and hate speech against Tigrayans both within and outside the country. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has also expressed alarm for the “safety and well-being” of the 96,000 Eritrean refugees in Tigray, given the unconfirmed but “overwhelming number of reports of Eritrean refugees in Tigray being killed, abducted and forcibly returned to Eritrea,” where they could face persecution. Access to independent humanitarian aid continues to be limited in Tigray despite an agreement reached between the federal government and the UN on 29 November. Journalists critical of the government have been arrested, exacerbating existing restrictions on communication and information from the region. Read the Full Letter

In the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, States recognized that women’s rights are human rights and that all human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated. This should have been the basis for an intersectional approach to human rights and the recognition that the denial of access to safe and legal abortion impacts all aspects of women’s lives. Everyone has the right to life-saving interventions during or outside of crises. And yet, women and girls’ rights to bodily autonomy and safe abortion have been some of the first rights to be conveniently sacrificed under the guise of prioritizing COVID, as if health was a zero-sum game. That includes free, safe and legal abortion and comprehensive abortion and post-abortion care, without which women, girls and gender-non-conforming persons are forced to seek unsafe clandestine abortions or to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, in complete violation of our rights. During this pandemic, some governments are increasing barriers to abortion services by deeming it a non-essential medical procedure, or are instrumentalizing the crisis to further restrict access in law or practice. In health systems, for example, inadequate planning and the redeployment of medical personnel and resources to COVID-19 have decreased access to abortion and contraception. See the full Letter