Delivered at the Informal High-Level Discussion on the Occasion of the 20th Anniversary of the Human Rights Council. Speaker: Lisa Majumdar (Senior Global Advocacy Advisor, Center for Reproductive Rights)

Feminist and women’s rights movements have been among the most important drivers of the Council’s progress. Long before states were willing to recognize gender-based violence as a human rights violation, advance sexual and reproductive health and rights norms, or address the gendered impacts of conflict, technology and climate change, activists were demanding action.

Over the past two decades, the Council and its mechanisms have played a key role in advancing global norms. It has increasingly recognized that gender, as a system of power relations, is not a niche issue but fundamental to the realization of all human rights. The Council’s work has shown that advancing gender equality strengthens progress across peace and security, sustainable development, and the full realization of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights.

The Council’s record also challenges the perception that progress on gender-related rights is impossible. The increasing number of UPR recommendations and policy commitments demonstrates that consensus is often broader than negotiations suggest.

But progress does not happen on its own. Feminist and women’s rights organizations have been at the forefront of identifying emerging challenges, advancing solutions, and holding institutions, including this Council, accountable. Today, many of these organizations face devastating funding cuts, shrinking civic space, increasing reprisals, and coordinated attacks from movements that seek to roll back gender equality and human rights.

If there is one lesson to learn from the Council’s first twenty years, it is that human rights progress depends on the people and movements that drive it. States cannot celebrate gains on gender equality and SRHR while allowing the organizations that made those gains possible to disappear.

The Council’s legacy will not be measured by resolutions adopted or anniversaries marked. It will be measured by whether people are freer, safer, and better able to exercise their rights. We call on member states to invest accordingly. Fund local feminist organizations. Protect civic space. Invest in the movements that turn commitments in Geneva into change on the ground.

We ask the panellists: how can the Council ensure that those who have contributed so much to it can continue to do so?

Signatories:

Amnesty International

AWID

Center for Reproductive Rights

CHOICE for Youth & Sexuality

International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)

Frontline AIDS

International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF)

Just Futures Collective

Plan International inc.