The Human Rights Council (HRC) is the UN’s main “political” human rights body, meaning it’s the main place where governments discuss human rights issues,  negotiate human rights standards,  and hold one another accountable for human rights violations. The HRC meets a few times a year, and recently concluded its 47th session in July. 

As Rights at Risk, the first trends report from ther Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs), highlights, ultraconservatives, fundamentalists and other anti-rights actors are operating with increased impact, frequency, coordination, resources, and support in human rights spaces that have historically been a site for feminist gains and human rights advancements.¹  

“[To be a woman leader] is to love and defend our
 culture, land, race, identity.
It is to defend who we are.”
- Claudia Rincón, Colombian leader

Throughout history against oppression, those on the frontline always know that the struggle might take their lives. For a body that persistently refuses to be invisibilized, refuses to be at the very least passive in the face of oppression, is stolen, just like the land. 

On every corner of this planet, we who refuse to have our bodies, our minds, our communities bound and suppressed, have always had heroes, we are surrounded by them, they are with us, they are us.

 “Everything we do at Casa La Serena is an act of constructive rebellion that generates positive realities in the midst of structural violence,” explain Ana María Hernández and  Cinthia Pacheco, both of Consorcio Oaxaca. 

Against bleak ghosts of familiar urban landscape and CCTV cameras labelled “for your protection” the news on the radio skits between weather forecast, rationing, raids, a special public appearance by the queen, politicians promising increased production and London quarantine zones to be avoided “for reasons of health and safety”.

- Impressions from V for Vendetta, 1982

Talking to feminists these days, you get a range of perspectives on the current crisis and where we’re headed.