While U.S. constitutional law provides a clear basis to reject Tennessee’s attempt to silence individuals providing information about safe and lawful healthcare access, affirming the district court’s holding would also align with international human rights law. Several international treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (“ICCPR”) and the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (“CRC”), support the position that the Recruitment Provision violates longstanding international legal principles protecting free speech.

The Global Justice Center and the Leitner Center welcome the opportunity to submit comments to the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar relating to the forthcoming conference room paper on pathways to accountability for grave human rights violations in Myanmar.

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.

We the undersigned 115 reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations are dedicated to the protection and realization of human rights for all people, and we are deeply concerned about the United States Government’s decision to withdraw from the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, an unprecedented step that signals a worrying retreat from our human rights obligations and the global mechanisms of accountability.

In this brief, Global Justice Center respectfully urges the Court to: first, recognize forced sterilization as a specific form of reproductive violence with specific characteristics and harms, and requiring particular remedies; and second, consider the mass, State-sponsored character of the harm that underlies this case, in ordering appropriate reparations.