As a coalition of partners from across regions and movements who have worked together for more than twenty years to advance sexual rights within the UN human rights system, we want to share this update transparently and collectively.
The Sexual Rights Initiative (SRI) will close its Geneva office on 1 April 2026, following a period of strong programmatic delivery and significant impact. This decision reflects both financial realities, including a more constrained funding environment, and political and strategic considerations, with the coalition adapting with partner-driven implementation and decentralisation.
We recognise that this decision marks the closure of an era in which a dedicated team based in Geneva worked tirelessly, in close collaboration with coalition partners, to advance and deepen the shared political project of SRI. Over these years, the Geneva team helped steward relationships, translate collective analyses rising from national and regional realities into UN spaces, and support partners’ engagement in ways that strengthened the coalition as a whole. This transition is felt deeply by those who have carried this work in Geneva, and by the many partners who have worked alongside them and benefited from their expertise, care, and political commitment.
The closure of the Geneva office does not signal an end to SRI’s work or impact. The Sexual Rights Initiative will continue. While the closure of the office will reduce overall operational capacity, the political acumen, analysis, and strategic direction of SRI will continue to be collectively shaped by partners across regions and movements.
Throughout this transition, the Geneva team and the coalition members remain deeply committed to the partnerships and commitments made with individual activists, organisations, and movements. The period leading up to 1 April will be dedicated to a structured and careful handover of Geneva-based work to partner organisations to continue specific strands of engagement. This is being done with the explicit aim of ensuring continuity and sustainability, and of reducing the risk of gaps at a time when the UN human rights system itself is under increased pressure and potential collapse.
As part of this transition, and following a collective decision by all SRI partners, Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights will continue to hold the secretariat function of the coalition, ensuring continuity in agreed areas of governance, coordination, and external engagement.
SRI recognises that decisions about structure, funding, and location are inseparable from global power dynamics within the human rights system. As a coalition led predominantly by partners from the Global South, SRI remains committed to ongoing reflection and action toward more equitable, redistributive, and accountable forms of governance and implementation, including engagement with institutional platforms in service of partner-led political strategies.
Finally, the Geneva team of the SRI wants to take this moment to express our deep gratitude to you, and to the many activists, movements, and organisations who have worked alongside us over the past eight years of SRI’s expanded presence in Geneva. Thank you for the trust, collaboration, and shared political labour in bold political experiments — for for collectively advancing analyses that frame sexual rights through a political economy lens, for centring the analyses, demands, and leadership of marginalised and silenced communities, and for insisting that struggles over sexual and reproductive rights are inseparable from struggles over power, resources, self-determination, and whose lives are valued.
We look forward to continuing to work together in this next phase, and we welcome any questions or conversations as the transition unfolds.
With appreciation and solidarity,
Carrie Shelver, Manager of the SRI Geneva office
Frédérique Chabot, Executive Director, Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights
Geetanjali Misra, Executive Director, CREA
Fernando D'Elio, Co-Executive Director, Akãhatã
Lobna Darwish, Gender and Human Rights, Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR)