Thank you, President.
Action Canada delivers this statement on behalf of the Sexual Rights Initiative.
Sports play an important role in the lives of women and girls in all their diversity. It can foster confidence, leadership, health, participation, and a sense of belonging. However, to truly empower women and girls through sports, we must ensure that sporting spaces are accessible, inclusive, and safe for everyone. This includes transgender and gender-diverse people. Empowerment cannot be achieved through exclusion.
Across regions, restrictions on transgender women’s and girls’ participation in sports are undermining their rights to privacy and dignity. Recent developments in Canada illustrate this challenge. Alberta’s Fairness and Safety in Sport Act prohibits transgender women and girls from participating in women’s sports and requires schools and sport organizations to collect sensitive personal information. Such measures risk outing transgender and gender-diverse youth and create environments of surveillance. Rather than protecting women and girls, these practices subject them to increased scrutiny based on their bodies and identities.
We are also concerned about the lack of accountability of powerful sports federations and corporate actors, who often use major sporting events to project narratives of progress while obscuring ongoing human rights violations, including gender-based violence, racism and discrimination. Sporting institutions must be held accountable for the broader social and human rights impacts of their actions.
The empowerment of women and girls in all their diversity cannot be limited to their participation in a sport. It must extend to all aspects of their lives. Without inclusion, equality, and human rights at its core, empowerment through sport remains incomplete.
Thank you.