The Human Rights Council (HRC) is the UN’s main political human rights body. It's where countries discuss and negotiate human rights issues, challenge and hold each other accountable for violations. Commonly known as ‘the session of the year that focuses on gender’, the four week long session of the HRC from 18 June was not so different from other years. States and conservative non-state actors used familiar arguments to challenge established rights regarding gender and sexuality, and incorporate regressive language.1
While feminists have historically regarded the HRC as a space that is more accessible for activists compared to the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) with more opportunities to advance rights on gender and sexuality, this year’s session raised many questions, like the one Sachini Perera posed in their reflection post in March 2024: what does it mean for Global South-based feminists to show up in these spaces in general but also in the current landscape of genocide, corporate capture and a well-oiled opposition machinery? For this HRC session in particular, it forces us feminists to ask ourselves: whose voices do we really center in these spaces, and how do we move away from colonial dynamics within not just the system, but also within our own movements?
Whose voices do we center?
One of the main concerns of feminists in the 56th session was the harmful report of the current UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls (SRVAW). This report regresses from established human rights standards concerning sex work, undermining the advocacy efforts of sex worker movements and perpetuates stigma against sex work and sex workers.
The Sex Workers Rights Advocacy Network (SWAN) highlights: “It [the report] employs shameful and stigmatizing terminology that deepens the marginalization of sex workers.” As the report advocates for harmful models of criminalizing sex work, it “disregards extensive submissions from sex workers and their allies that highlight the real impacts of such policies. Criminalization not only endangers sex workers but also undermines their human rights, safety, and dignity.”
This approach of the current SRVAW, Reem Alsalem, who claims to be a feminist herself, presents feminists with questions to ourselves: Whose voices do we center in our advocacy and whose rights do we deem worth upholding? How can we resist reproducing the same colonial dynamics by prioritizing those who are deemed as ‘experts’ and ‘saving’ those ‘in need’? The criminalization of sex work, rooted in colonial laws in most countries, draws a line between those who are deemed worthy of such protection and those who were considered “disposable.” It is no coincidence then that the Special Rapporteur’s problematic report on sex work comes after her persistent regressive and harmful positions on the rights of trans people that effectively pitches the “safety” and rights of cis women against the bodily autonomy of trans people.
In general, activists and communities that are targeted by punitive and criminal laws, such as sex workers and Palestinian activists, are also the ones being systematically sidelined in global policy spaces. Meanwhile, Global South activists face additional hurdles to access UN spaces due to racist and discriminatory visa regimes. Looming over, is the ongoing liquidity crisis faced by the UN human rights system. While the cash crunch has impacted key deliverables and activities of the human rights system, civil society, especially those based outside of Geneva, has been the first to feel its impact.
The murky politics of ‘decolonization’
During this session, the Council was presented with the resolution on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and girls, with a focus on poverty. Led by Mexico and Chile, the resolution was met with amendments from the Russian Federation and Kuwait on behalf of the Group of Arab States, using familiar arguments to weaken or delete standards on sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, comprehensive sexuality education, bodily autonomy and gender.2
NGOs welcomed the triennial resolution on HIV presented by Brazil, Colombia, Portugal and Thailand.3 Of note was the historic consensus adoption of the term "sexual and reproductive health and rights," in a globally negotiated document, a milestone achievement after prolonged advocacy in global negotiations. It also reaffirms the right to use, to the fullest extent, the provisions contained in the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, which provides flexibilities for the protection of public health and promotes access to medicines for all, in particular for developing countries. The adoption was subject to several proposed amendments which mirrored those in the discrimination against women resolutions.
While all the proposed hostile amendments were rejected, and many welcomed the HIV resolution - particularly from the perspective of a Global South feminist working within the global human rights system - I continue to stew on familiar questions: how can we translate human rights language into tangible action on the ground? How can feminist movements advance our advocacy on SRHR while resisting the effort of states to co-opt our language and causes? The issue of hypocrisy of Global North “gender champion” states in pushing for progressive SRHR language can no longer be treated like the elephant in room, especially in the context of Israel’s genocide against Palestinian people. As highlighted by our partners at the Sexual Rights Initiative (SRI), when components of SRHR are sliced off and separated into silos as not-applicable, not-relevant or separate from economic and social justice, and liberation from settler colonial oppression and the full realization of these rights becomes even more of a distant dream.
The colonial mindset of respectability and morality deems sex workers as disposable is the same logic of colonial domination and dispossession that underpins the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. Since October 2023, activists and human rights advocates have been marred with the question of how can we continue with “business as usual” while a genocide is ongoing. Feminists working on UN advocacy in particular are faced with an existential question of how to engage in the multilateral space given the underlying imperial fabric of international law, especially where gender and sexuality are often co-opted and used as bargaining chips or tools for pinkwashing as illustrated above.
No more ‘business as usual’: collective and cross-movement mobilization
While acknowledging the institutionalization of human rights as an inherent challenge to movements doing advocacy in the UN, this year I witnessed the power of collective mobilization, from sex workers, feminists, mainstream human rights organizations, Palestinian organizations, student movements, among others.
In response to the SRVAW’s report, 20 sex workers from various regions made it to Geneva to the Human Rights Council, led by Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) and supported by SRI. From coordinating NGO statements with allies during the interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur, to organizing a side event on decriminalizing sex work and a protest outside the UN building, the mobilization of sex workers at the HRC presented an important disruption against the report of the Special Rapporteur and its harmful position. It also confronts the patriarchal, classist, colonial and racist nature of the UN system that has been historically unwilling to listen to sex workers, to recognize the agency and rights of sex workers on their own terms.4
We collectively witnessed Palestinian organizations, student movements based in Geneva, the US and Europe, organizations working on civil and political rights, economic justice, gender and sexuality and allies within the UN system attempt to challenge “business as usual” within the UN. Among issues that were raised by civil society was the clampdown on the freedom of peaceful assembly and expression for people seeking to communicate their solidarity with Palestinians and/or their criticisms of the state of Israel in Europe and North America, the political arrests and detention of Palestinian student citizens of Israel, as well as the obligation of states to address corporate complicity of business and transnational corporations in the Genocide.
The collaboration and cross-mobilization between organizations working on different issues, thematic areas and regions to call out impunity reflects the mass outrage we are witnessing globally. It may also present us with an opportunity to shift away from the divisive geopolitical and economic interests that often drive multilateral systems, and towards a foundation of solidarity and collective liberation. While there may not be an easy answer to existential questions of feminist engagement in the UN, Wesam Ahmed, Al-Haq Centre for Applied International Law highlights, “We have to try to force change at the UN from within but not exclusively… We have to recognise our place in the system and the power of the individual; if everyone is pushing towards the same goal, eventually, the system will change” .
1 Feminist Reflections from HRC53: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities
2, Did you miss it? Here’s what happened at HRC 56!
3 This resolution addressed the funding gaps for HIV prevention programmes for persons from key populations, specifically for HIV programmes in low- and middle-income countries.