Publications

In September 2024, UN Women and Global Justice Center issued a report detailing challenges and offering legal guidance to improve the documentation of reproductive violence in crisis and conflict by UN international investigations. These investigations play a key role in guiding international responses, so omitting documentation of reproductive violence can have devastating ripple effects. This Q&A draws from the report to provide information on what reproductive violence is, why its documentation in conflict and crisis situations matters, and how this documentation can be done more effectively.

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.

On June 4, 2022, the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that ended the constitutional right to abortion in the US. Following the ruling, many states have moved to ban abortion and issue new restrictions on abortion care. This factsheet answers questions about protections for abortion under international law. Over the last few decades, multiple human rights treaties have been developed that, together, establish reproductive autonomy as a human right.

We write because your administration’s consistently yielding response to the Israeli government’s escalating attacks against prominent Palestinian human rights and civil society groups over the past 10 months has put the safety and well-being of Palestinian human rights defenders at serious risk. We call for immediate action in response to the Israeli government’s latest escalation so as to curtail any further imminent repressive tactics by Israeli authorities and ensure Palestinian civil society is free to continue its critical work.

On 11 November 2019, the Republic of The Gambia filed suit against the Republic of the Union of Myanmar in the International Court of Justice (“ICJ”) for violating the Genocide Convention. Two months later at the request of The Gambia, the ICJ ordered the government of Myanmar to take certain actions to protect the Rohingya via “provisional measures” while the case proceeds. This historic lawsuit brings a critical focus to Myanmar’s responsibility as a state for the Rohingya genocide.

As a human rights non-governmental organization, we write to express our deep concern with the Commission, its work to date, and the potential harm that a final report produced by the Commission, in line with its mandate and the views expressed by several of its members, may have on the international human rights framework.

As human rights organizations, scholars, defenders and activists, we the 167 undersigned, write to express our grave concern about the work of the U.S. State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights and any potential report or output that undermines the international human rights system and purports to reinterpret its respective treaties and monitoring bodies. In particular, we urge the Commission to reject the prioritization of freedom of religion as a cloak to permit violations of the human rights of women, girls, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

Gender permeates the planning, commission, and resolution of criminal acts within the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction. It is woven into perpetrators’ planning and commission of crimes, as well as victims’ (individual and collective) experience and recovery of acts committed against them. Accordingly, gender must be a central criterion in the group of independent experts’ review of the International Criminal Court (“ICC” or “the Court”) and the Rome Statute system. Laudably, the Rome Statute was among the first international treaties to extensively address sexual and gender-based violence. Moreover, from the beginning of her term ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has made it a priority to close the gender justice gap, as evidenced by her Policy Paper on Sexual and GenderBased Crimes, the first ever such policy for an international court or tribunal. Despite these foundational pillars and priorities, in the 18 years of the Court’s operation there has only been one standing conviction on sexual violence. This submission highlights avenues for improving gender justice at varying stages of a case. It identifies opportunities for progress regarding staffing and prosecutorial strategies on case selection, prioritization, and investigation that hinder access to justice in these cases. Until gender is mainstreamed throughout all stages of ICC cases, the Court will be limited in its capacity to deliver justice.

Executive Summary During the United States’ (“US”) second-cycle Universal Periodic Review (“UPR”), multiple recommendations were made with respect to US abortion restrictions on foreign assistance, including the Helms Amendment. The US has failed to take any action on these recommendations, and in fact, in 2017, the Trump Administration entrenched and expanded the scope of these policies further with the reinstatement of the Global Gag Rule (or “GGR”, officially termed “Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance”). This submission highlights continuing concerns over these US policies which impose blanket prohibitions on abortion services and speech, in violation of US obligations under international humanitarian law, international human rights law, customary international law, and UN Security Council Resolutions. Download PDF