Reports

Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) play a fundamental role in the promotion of human rights worldwide, and their importance is particularly demonstrated in advocating for specific rights, such as women’s rights, gender equality, and sexual and reproductive rights. Nonetheless, WHRDs face several challenges; besides the issues common to Human Rights Defenders (HRDs), including verbal and physical attacks, threats, torture, forced disappearances, murder, and arbitrary detentions, WHRDs are faced with additional obstacles, such as gender-based violence. Against this backdrop, the present report will be divided into two main parts. Firstly, it will identify and explain the challenges and violations faced by WHRDs, and how they differ from the violations faced by HRDs generally. In the second chapter, the report addresses the forms of protection available in international law for WHRDs, and lastly, based on the analysis conducted, the report provides recommendations with the intent of ensuring that WHRDs can carry out their work safely and effectively.

Achieving gender equality among girls and women around the world is a priority, yet an ambitious goal that is far from being achieved by the year 2030. Among the numerous violations and gender- based violence experienced is Child, Early, and Forced Marriage (CEFM), a fundamental violation of human rights that has profound implications for the development, safety, and well-being of women and girls around the world. It is estimated that the total number of girls married in childhood stands at 12 million per year (UNICEF, 2022), and while girls are disproportionately affected, boys can also be victims. CEFM is intrinsically related to social norms and gender constructions, and it is caused by a range of factors, such as poverty and a lack of education, and is exacerbated by conflict, humanitarian crises, and climate change. However, its prevalence is substantially varied across different contexts, regions, and countries. On a global scale, today, more than half a billion women and girls were married in childhood. Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have the highest rates of child marriage, and in Latin America and the Caribbean, the levels are equivalent to those from 25 years ago (UNICEF, 2021/b). The present report aimed to research and analyse the country with the worst data regarding child marriage in each of the above-mentioned regions. According to the “Child Marriage Atlas” of the NGO Girls Not Brides, in Niger, located in Sub-Saharan Africa, 76 percent of women aged 20–24 were first married or in a union before they were 18 years old, making Niger the country with the highest rate of child marriage in the world. In Bangladesh, located in South Asia, child marriage rate is 51 percent, the highest in the region. Finally, the Dominican Republic, in Latin America and the Caribbean, has 36 percent (Girls Not Brides n.d/d). The current report intends to provide an in-depth review of forced marriage and its causes, consequences, and prevalence worldwide, seeking to inform and raise awareness about the seriousness of the issue. Thus, it is organised around two main chapters. Chapter 1 aims to address the problem of forced marriage through its definition, international mechanisms, and national legislation. It will then move to an examination of the causes and consequences of CEFM. Chapter 2 will provide a comprehensive overview of Niger, Bangladesh, and the Dominican Republic. The countries’ cases will be analysed in terms of the prevalence of the issue in the country, its causes, consequences, and challenges, and finally, what efforts and actions, in terms of policies and projects, are taken by the country’s government to combat and eradicate CEFM.

Natural disasters affect all members of society, however, it is a misconception that their impacts are indiscriminate. Groups of people who are marginalised are more vulnerable, either socially, economically, culturally, politically, or institutionally, being impacted in more severe ways (Dagousset, 2020). Among these vulnerabilities, it is widely observed that natural disasters possess huge gendered consequences.

The principle of equality was enshrined in Article 1 of the Charter of the United Nations in 1945. The terms of reference of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, formulated at its first session in 1947, emphasised that its task was to “prepare recommendations and reports for the advancement of women’s rights in the political, economic, social and educational fields.” One of the first results of the Commission’s work was the 1952 Convention on the Political Rights of Women, which explicitly states that women “shall be admitted, on equal terms with men and without discrimination of any kind, to all public elections established by national law” (Article 2) and “shall have the right to hold public office and to exercise all public functions established by national law” (Article 3). Women today have the right to vote and hold office in almost every country in the world. However, relatively few women have been elected to national parliaments through the democratic process, and even fewer have reached top positions (Gierycz, 1999), although various analyses have shown the positive impact of women’s participation in decision making processes regarding conflict prevention and resolution.

The 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the first international legal document relating to asylum and migration, provides for a definition of what a refugee ought to be. Interestingly enough, this definition is defined in the masculine as a person who, “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”1 While the inclusion of the term ‘sex’ was discussed in the list of grounds for non- discrimination in Article 3 of the Convention, the delegates decided against it as, like pointed out by the British delegate at the time, “the equality of the sexes was a matter for national legislation”2 and the inclusion of gender might not coincide with national legislations.3 This was further underlined by the UN High Commissioner for Refugee at the time, Van Heuven Goedhart, who pointed that the inclusion of sex/gender in the discriminatory grounds was not necessarily as he “doubted strongly whether there would be any cases of persecution on account of sex”.4 This absence of gender approach in the asylum framework was a large miscalculation on the part of the delegates as it has been largely shown since that women and girls face disproportionate struggles in seeking asylum. However, the mention of the specific struggle faced by women and girls in refugee settings was only brought up decades later thanks to the work of NGOs and academics in the late 1980s, early 1990s.5 They pointed out that, although no one argued that women could be refugees, the definition was applied in a way that ignored some of the persecution faced by women. Spijkerboer notes for instance the common rejection of sexual violence as a ground for persecution as it was defined as a private act. Similarly, issues of gender discrimination, even if brought up a level of harm severe enough to amount to persecution in the sense of the Convention, were often just sent back as an issue of national sovereignty.6 This grassroot work allowed for a change of perspective at the UN level, focusing the 1995 UNHCR’s calendar on refugee women which led to the organization of multiple conferences on the topic as well as the publication of conclusions7 and guidelines8 . The European Asylum system, in copying the UN’s asylum policies down the line added the mention of gender and gender sensitive language to its documents, particularly the Qualification Directive which define the grounds receivable for asylum to be granted. Through the work of UN Women and CEDAW9 , the UN has also now caught up on the inclusion of women and girls as a particular social group and of gender as a ground for persecution.10 However, there is still immense work to be done in reporting, defining and effectively responding to the harm faced by refugee women and girls around the globe. It is in this context that this report will dwell into the gender specific harm suffered by women and girls in refugee settings. To do so, it will follow the chronological journey of asylum seekers, highlighting at every step of this process the gender specific hardships. In this sense, it will first look at (1) the causes of flight and displacement , before looking at (2) the experience of the refugee journey for women and girls, (3) the reception conditions and the life of women and girls in refugee camps. Finally, it will highlight (4) the particular obstacles that LGBTQIA+ women have to overcome in the qualification process.

This article will provide a summary and analysis of the judgment, diving into the arguments of the German government subsequently supported by the Court, as well as exposing the weaknesses of the decision and its argumentation.

International Women’s Day is celebrated annually on the 8th of March. This report explains why it still remains important for us to celebrate this day, as a day to recognise the achievements women have made to our societies in a patriarchal world.

The state of women’s rights in the Republic of Iran has been the subject of national sorrow and international scrutiny for the past decades, accelerated ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But the current “Woman. Life. Freedom” movement has gained momentum in unprecedented ways, as the revolutionary and brave calls of women against restrictive policies have gained more international attention than ever before. This report covers the significance of the current demonstrations by first focusing on the historical context of women’s rights in Iran and how various factors have contributed to their strengthening in some situations and their weakening in others.