Highlights from Our Recent Trip to the United Nations
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Our team of staff, global partners, and dedicated volunteers recently returned from a trip to Geneva for the 60th session of the Human Rights Council. Equipped with data from months of in-depth research and monitoring, we advocated on issues that are at the heart of our work: death penalty abolition, civil and political rights, women's rights, LGBTIQ+ rights, and migrant rights.
Our team focused on human rights issues in 10 key countries: Belarus, Croatia, Jamaica, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Maldives, the Marshall Islands, Mongolia, and the United States. The Human Rights Council has scheduled its review of the human rights records of these countries for November, and we want to ensure that the issues that The Advocates and our partners have identified will be in the spotlight during those reviews. We met with delegates from UN Member States, urging them to make strong recommendations to our target countries during this review, called the Universal Periodic Review, or UPR. Unfortunately, the US has indicated it will refuse to participate in its own review, the first country to do so in the history of the UPR. The Advocates, on behalf of 40 other organizations, delivered an oral statement on how destabilizing this could be for the human rights framework at the UN.
One of our team's advocacy priorities during our week at the UN was highlighting the importance of advancing women's rights. Globally, one in three women will experience violence in their lifetime—whether it manifests as gender-based violence, trafficking, exploitation, or violence as a weapon of war. Women generally face obstacles in obtaining justice and reparations for these human rights violations due to systematic discrimination within the legal and justice systems.
Some of our recommendations for our women's rights advocacy focused on improving the ability of government actors to identify women victims or survivors of abuse, strengthening gender-sensitive training for frontline workers, expanding specialized services for survivors, and expanding legislation to protect women from violence. At the heart of these priorities is our goal: the recognition that women's rights are human rights and that advancing safety, justice, and equality for women advances human rights for everyone. Learn more about our women's rights work here.
In addition, we hosted our side event, Gender Issues and the Death Penalty in the November UPR, along with our partners, in which we gave Human Rights Council delegates a "one-stop shop" for UPR recommendations relating to the death penalty. This event highlighted the gender dimension of the death penalty, with each panelist explaining how women who come into conflict with the law and who are charged with capital crimes face multiple layers of gender-based discrimination in the criminal legal system. Find out more about our abolition work here.
Our team also advocated for LGBTIQ+ rights at the UN, particularly in Mongolia and the United States, amplifying this critical issue on the global stage and holding governments accountable to their international obligations. Some of our recommendations included the enactment of comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation, thorough and prompt investigations of hate-motivated crimes against LGBTIQ+ persons, and the adoption of guidelines for gender-affirming healthcare for trans and gender nonconforming people, as well as effective implementation of legal gender recognition.
Although our time in Geneva has ended for now, we continue to engage in advocacy and training, working in partnerships in our home community and around the globe to address some of the world's most intractable human rights issues. Learn more about our international advocacy and ways to become part of this important work here.
Our team also shared some of their personal highlights in the video below.
