Young feminists are pushing back and forging new paths in global resistance, but they need financial support and personal security to achieve real gains.

The latest report from UN expert Karima Bennoune is an important building block in the human rights response to fundamentalisms and extremisms, and has special importance for feminists.

Corporate impunity impacts young women and girls disproportionately. Young feminists must join the growing mobilisation for a UN treaty on transnational corporations and human rights.

The 36th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council ended in the final days of September with a few successes, a few question marks and a few “I can’t believe I just heard that” moments.

HRC36 allowed another round of governments playing state games, wielding power to their advantage and using ideas about culture, sovereignty and neoliberal economic policy as tactics to assert regional or national dominance.

For better and for worse, women’s human rights concerns remained a theme throughout.

The Human Rights Council (HRC), which generally meets three times a year in Geneva, is the UN’s main human rights “political body” where governments both advance human rights standards but also fight out political conflicts. In this session, the “big ticket” regional discussions focused on Syria and Palestine. Government delegations argued, of course in the most diplomatic of terms, about the Assad regime and the Israeli government occupation of Palestine and what strategies need to be adopted or stopped to end the human rights and humanitarian crises there.

But each Council session also convenes discussions in which governments adopt country and thematic resolutions. Gender and sexuality issues are often in the hidden fibers of these debates.

The Question of the Death Penalty

One of the most controversial resolutions focused on the “question of the death penalty” – but not actually whether the use of it infringes on human rights, which, of course it does. The death penalty violates, for instance, not only the right to life but also the right to be free from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. As governments haven’t been able to come to agreement about banning its use, they continue to give one another permission to legally kill, based on claims to sovereignty of national legal systems. 

In this case, the Council resolution focused on the right to equality and discriminatory application in the use of the death penalty, with some emphasis on “deploring” and “condemning” execution of those exercising their rights to freedom of expression and assembly, those under 18 at the time of the crime, people with mental or intellectual disabilities, and in an interesting nod to gender and sexual rights, concerns about killing of pregnant women, people who engage in same-sex sexual relations and those who engage in adultery.

As for that last item, the final resolution noted the disproportionate use of the death penalty to punish women who have sex outside of heterosexual marriage (of course it didn’t use that exact language, but heteronormativity is implied).

The language of adultery and the focus on women is a good development in promoting a gendered analysis of state killing. So is the referencing of people who are killed because of their real or perceived sexual orientation. Some delegations opposed these references to gender and sexuality with thinly veiled extremist arguments - they argued that the language of the resolution challenged their national and cultural systems.

In other words, they argued that because their cultures or legal systems allow for killing people who engage in certain sexual behaviours, they couldn’t vote to support the non-discrimination language - or sometimes any language - in the text. There were close to ten amendments proposed to the resolution – all put forward by Russia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia - to limit its reach. Two were focused on the issue of sovereignty itself. All amendments were defeated, yet human rights and sexual rights advocates have reason to be concerned as some votes were a bit too close for comfort.

These states voted against the resolution: Bangladesh, Botswana, Burundi, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Iraq, Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and the United States.

One note about the final vote and post Council media: since the Council ended, a few media outlets have used a “gay spin” in their coverage about the death penalty resolution that’s a bit misleading. They have implied that the US voted against the resolution because it referenced consensual same-sex behavior. In fact, sometimes their spin made this seem like that reference was at the core of the resolution. But, in reality, the US generally votes against any death penalty resolution because execution is still legal – and used (as recently as in early October in the states of Alabama, Florida and Texas) - as a form of punishment.

So, the content of any resolution may not matter much: The US will still oppose it.

This is a joint written contribution by 14 organisations*, including AWID, submitted to the third session of the UN Open-ended intergovernmental working group (IGWG) on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights, on 23 October 2017.

This autumn brought the third edition of Chouftouhonna, the Tunis International Feminist Art Festival. Chouftouhonna is an intersectional feminist space by and for women, questioning gender roles and breaking the importance of patriarchy. 

For those who have attended a previous AWID Forum you can probably remember the energies that are generated in a space with 2000 feminist and social justice activists. The strength and renewal we feel when we meet with fellow activists all working together to co-create a better world. The learning and new knowledge we gain, create, and share. The solidarity we feel when we are able to build and strengthen connections.

We invite all to join us at the table, eat with us, sit with us, learn with us, grow with us…be with us as we co-create, and nourish our Black Feminist Futures.

In the lead up to the first Black Feminisms Forum, This is Africa will be publishing a series of interviews, features and articles about Black Feminisms. First up, Maggie Mapondera sits down with renowned activist, scholar and thinker Gay J McDougall, a member of the BFF’s Working Group, to talk about the struggles faced by women of African descent the world over.

Our freedom dreams are a roaring Black; swellings of coming insurrection manifested. This roar is felt in the tip of a brush about to paint the sounds of our resistance; in the cadence of saxophones, playing the drawings that our grandmothers sketched, of struggles unrelenting; in the poems inscribed by the movement of our bodies when that bass drops.