Civil Society Open Letter to
Inform the Principles on Gender
Persecution
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Over 20 years of international law
have defined gender as a social construct.
Furthermore, over the last two decades, numerous regional and UN human
rights mechanisms, including treaty bodies, have adopted language that
recognizes the social construction of gender, affirming human rights
protections for all people, no matter their sexual orientation, gender
identity, or expression, or sex characteristics. In addition, UN Special Procedures mandates have made similar assertions
regarding the social construction of gender and gender-related impacts on human
rights violations within global and regional human rights frameworks.
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Gender-based crimes are used
against victims* to enforce
gender regulations and impose gender stereotypes, for example on roles,
behaviors, activities, or attributes. Gender regulations often intersect with
other discriminatory regulations used to reinforce systems of oppression,
including, but not limited to, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion,
Indigenous status, immigration status, class, or disability status. When
addressing gender-based violence, accountability mechanisms and human rights
institutions should also take into consideration other intersecting forms of
discrimination that may also underlie a perpetrator’s intent to do harm.
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Accountability for gender-based
crimes and human rights violations needs to be informed and led by survivors
and their communities who have been affected by conflict, atrocity, and other violence contexts. Human
Rights Treaty Bodies should also hold states accountable for gender
persecution. To this end, these bodies should make clear states responsibility
to protect against gender persecution within their mandates.
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Accountability for gender persecution
must include meaningful participation of survivors of gender persecution in
peace and transitional justice processes. Survivors play a key role in creating
sustainable peace and their rights to participation in redress mechanisms
should be upheld.
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Accountability for gender
persecution must include prevention strategies that address gender inequality
and harmful gender stereotypes, and that enable women-led and LGBTQI+-led** civil
society organizations and human rights defenders to safely support their
communities.
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States must uphold their human
rights obligations, particularly those obligations pertaining to women, girls,
and LGBTQI+ persons, who are disproportionately impacted by violence,
discrimination, and an intersecting swath of human rights violations. This
includes recognizing the full diversity of citizens and communities, and
preventing and protecting all communities and peoples against gendered harms.
State obligations also include responsibility for acts of non-state actors.
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Civil society organizations are
experts on their communities and must be at the center of all accountability
and justice processes. Civil society can inform these processes with contextual
knowledge crucial to understanding communities, including but not limited to long
term impacts of colonialism; historical gender, racial, and ethnic
discrimination; impacts of climate breakdown; and structural oppressions that
may not be recognized by non-local actors.
*We recognize that persons who experience crimes or harms may identify
with the term “victim” or with the term “survivor.”
**While the acronym LGBTQI+ is inclusive of a broad range of persons, it is not exhaustive, nor is it the universally standard acronym. The plus sign represents people who identify with the broader LGBTQI community, but use other terms for self-identification.
