The Human Rights Council (HRC) is the UN’s main political human rights body. It is where countries discuss and negotiate human rights issues, challenge and hold each other accountable for violations.
(Find out more about the Human Rights Council, its structure and why feminists engage here!)
Commonly known as the session of the year that focuses on gender, the four week long session of the HRC59 took place from 16 June to 9 July. It featured resolutions focused on women’s economic empowerment, and economic and social rights, panels on gender-based violence in conflict, post-conflict and humanitarian settings, as well as Interactive Dialogues with Special Procedures mandates on care work and the rights of domestic workers.
While these processes were in motion -- and similar to previous years-- the intensifying credibility and legitimacy crisis faced by the UN could not be ignored. From regressions in human rights norms to the inaction and complicity of powerful states regarding the genocide in Gaza, and the UN funding crisis, the existential question of whether global human rights institutions can offer any utility in the pursuit of justice and accountability has only become more central.
Gender at HRC59: the dangers of protectionist approaches to rights
HRC59 saw the continuation of initiatives from states, anti-gender organizations and institutional actors to construct narrow and protectionist interpretations of rights related to gender and sexuality. While civil society welcomed the final text of the resolution led by Canada on Accelerating efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls: prevention through the fulfilment of economic, social and cultural rights, it was subject to nine amendments, six of which were tabled by Russia, and the other three by Bahrain. These hostile amendments, a recurring tactic used by states, were accompanied by predictable arguments opposing language on comprehensive sexuality education and bodily autonomy, denying that these concepts are widely accepted within the UN, despite their prior adoption by the Council.
During this session, we also witnessed an uptake of the use of ‘sex-based rights’ by states, a concept advocated in recent years by the current Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls (SR VAW), as well as conservative Christian organizations, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom. The ‘sex-based rights’ framing is in contradiction with long standing human rights norms that address discrimination based on gender. Feminist organizations have worked extensively to challenge this restrictive biological and essentialist understanding of womanhood, showing how it is rooted in a deeply racist and colonial history that polices and disciplines “transgressions” of gender and sexuality.
In her book, Enemy Feminisms, Sophie Lewis recalls how the Suffragette movements in the West were happy to align with state imperial goals and conservative actors in the name of “protecting women” (primarily white and middle class women) from racialised men, and from “sexual deviance.” We can draw clear parallels with today’s conservative actors and “gender critical” organizations who follow the same paternalistic logic to gender and sexuality whereby women and girls are characterised as inherently vulnerable and in need of state and patriarchal protection. “Protection” from either trans women (via the push for single sex spaces), the “pimp lobby” (via criminalisation of sex work) or themselves (via the denial of comprehensive sexuality education).
The SR VAW’s report on ‘sex-based rights’ was used by states such as the Holy See, Argentina, Qatar and Egypt to challenge language on gender-based violence during resolution negotiations. This false dichotomy on ‘sex-based’ vs ‘gender-based violence’ featured heavily in the resolution on empowering women and girls in and through sport, led by Qatar. While the ‘sex-based’ approach did not make it to the final text, it’s content was significantly weaker than previous initiatives, such as the HRC resolution on the Elimination of discrimination against women and girls in sport, led by South Africa, and the subsequent OHCHR report on the intersection of race and gender discrimination in sport mandated by the same resolution. Welcomed by feminists for their structural and intersectional analysis of gender-based and racial discrimination in elite sport, these initiatives reflected a timely response to the discrimination faced by Black athletes at the time, such as Caster Semenya.
A human rights system that does its job should help us with tools and frameworks to hold states and non-state actors accountable for these violations of people’s rights, instead of causing more harm to trans people, sex workers and racialised communities. The surfacing of the ‘gender vs sex debate’ now in the human rights system is a manifestation of the policing of gender taking place globally, such as that faced by Imane Khelif, the Algerian boxer who was targeted at the Olympics over questions about her gender, or the slew of legal rollbacks against the bodily autonomy of trans persons in the UK and the US.
The human rights system and its lack of response to ongoing genocides and the inequitable economic order
In reality, the human rights system’s lack of credibility has always been related to its inability (and unwillingness) to meaningfully grapple with legacies and contemporary forms of imperialism, colonialism and racism, and its (newer) relative, neoliberalism. The most glaring example currently is how Western states and institutional actors support ‘progressive’ policies to champion bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights, but draw a hard line at recognising the self-determination and bodily autonomy of the Palestinian people. Their complicity is not only limited to the apartheid and genocide in Palestine, but also around the harms caused by corporate power, extractivism and the arms trade. The sanctions initiated by United States (and the following silence of Western states) against the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, in response to her report exposing the complicity of corporations in the genocide in Palestine demonstrated this clearly.
Similarly, feminists have highlighted how global governance systems are divided into institutions with “real teeth,” such as trade treaties and coercive economic systems, and others, such as the human rights system, which seem to be deliberately constructed as a feel-good exercise. The global financial architecture itself has been a vehicle of neoliberalism and colonization that exerts control over countries in the Global South through debt burdens, austerity measures, structural adjustment programs and loan conditionalities. Although efforts have been made by civil society to push for human rights bodies (and directly in institutions such as the World Trade Organizations) to hold these economic systems accountable, such processes are often held hostage by some powerful states who only have interest in maintaining the status quo.
Civil society and the UN in the context of funding cuts, militarization and corporate capture
At this moment, money is being poured into military spending and pockets of corporations and the global elite. Civil society organizations, particularly those in the Global Majority, are bearing the brunt of this financial squeeze. While donors shift priorities or reduce funding altogether, many organizations are closing operations or scaling back drastically. This situation is further exacerbated by the funding cuts within the UN system, as powerful states move away from multilateral cooperation and contributing financially to the multilateral system. This has serious consequences that were clearly visible during this session, from the reduction of number of sessions and reports to the limited space for civil society side events and the lack of hybrid participation. Avenues for civil society to hold states accountable and challenge injustices within and inbuilt in the system has only reduced.
At its core, the impact of both outwardly ‘anti-gender’ and camouflaged purplewashing initiatives is proving to be a test of feminist advocates’ political compass in the HRC. So what does it mean for feminists when gender and sexuality are used as pawns and co-opted by the system and states to either posture or more egregiously to obscure their violations, or both? Even as feminists that have access to these spaces recognize the lack of credibility of the human rights system, the cost of abandoning these spaces can feel too high, especially when national activists see this as one of the very few visible paths to accountability. Further, what does it mean for us to walk away when communities most impacted by violations, especially genocide, continue to push accountability from and of the system?
In times of crisis, we must commit ourselves to politics based on solidarity, and tackle existential questions of our relationship between power, resources and institutions. From the inequity of the political and economic global order to the neoliberal co-option of our rights, this political moment calls on us to challenge our narrow and siloed approach in addressing gender and sexuality, and resist reactionary advocacy, and the co-optation of our struggles for short and medium term gains. There are no easy answers on how we do this in practice. A year has passed since the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, but the key question of this reflection piece from Sachini Perera remains more pertinent than ever:
“what are we willing to lose — temporarily and/or permanently — by taking bold, unapologetic, disruptive and internationalist stances whether it’s about Palestine, Sudan, Iran, Congo, Kashmir, West Papua, Western Sahara? Or to make it clear to champions of gender equality among member states that their allyship, support and purple/pinkwashing can no longer be used as bargaining chips to pick and choose which of our interconnected struggles they will take onboard?”
1 Sophie Lewis Enemy Feminism: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation (2025) pg.109