The 59th session of the UN Human Rights Council will take place from 16 June to 9 July 2025.
Once again, the session will not be hybrid because of the absence of a mandate from the General Assembly to retain remote participation. This will not affect pre-recorded statements at all debates, panels and discussions, as well as the webcasting on UN Web TV of the public meetings scheduled in the Programme of Work. Due to the ongoing renovations started in 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, side events taking place in the Palais are limited to one per organisation and one hour in duration. As the United Nations liquidity crisis deepens, the Council has adopted urgent measures to fulfil its mandate in line with the need to cut sixteen of its meetings by the end of the year. This session, the length of interactive and enhanced dialogues will be capped at 1 hour and 30 minutes, leaving 15 minutes for NGO statements.
Below you can find information about:
- Anticipated sexual rights-related resolutions, panels and reports
- UPR outcomes
- SRI events taking place during the 59th session
Please note that all dates are provisional and subject to change.
The latest information about the session will be available on OHCHR’s HRC59 page.
Access the full programme of work for HRC59
Access the HRC59 scheduled meeting calendar
Featured News
The United Nations faces an escalating liquidity crisis that is undermining its capacity to uphold and promote human rights worldwide. Member states’ chronic underpayment of contributions has left the organisation with significant cash shortfalls, forcing severe cutbacks across its operations. Human rights mechanisms, including the Human Rights Council, treaty bodies, special procedures, and field offices, are facing severe challenges. This has a direct impact on those who rely on these mechanisms for international attention, accountability, and advocacy.
This crisis is unfolding against a backdrop of intensifying global instability. The ongoing genocide in Gaza has highlighted deep fractures in the international human rights system. The increasing disregard for international humanitarian law in numerous other conflicts is symptomatic of a broader erosion of multilateral consensus. In many regions, the credibility of international institutions is being questioned, not only due to geopolitical divisions, but also because of the perceived ineffectiveness of bodies that lack adequate resources to act.
Civil society organisations, particularly those in the Global South, are also bearing the brunt of this financial squeeze. As donors shift priorities or reduce funding altogether, many organisations are closing operations or scaling back drastically. This loss further weakens the human rights ecosystem, which depends on civil society to hold states accountable and, oftentimes, fill the implementation gap left by states' inaction. The increasing militarisation everywhere in the world, increasing authoritarianism, and the increasing racist, misogynist rhetoric by public officials require a vibrant, independent, robust and bold civil society mobilisation and an urgent need to listen to the rights holders.
At the upcoming HRC session, Sexual Rights Initiative, Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW), European Sex Workers' Rights Alliance (ESWA) and FIZ Fachstelle Frauenhandel und Frauenmigration, will host a side event titled “Beyond Conflation: A Rights-Based Approach to Trafficking and Sex Work”. The side event will address the harms caused by conflating sex work with trafficking, deriving from a paternalistic approach to sex work and denying sex workers their right to bodily autonomy and capacity to consent, emphasising the urgent need to recognise sex work as work – a human rights and practical imperative to prevent and eliminate all forms of discrimination.
Beyond Conflation: A Rights-Based Approach to Trafficking and Sex Work
Side-event during the 59th session of the UN Human Rights Council
Wednesday, 25 June 2025, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm CET
Room XXV, Palais des Nations
Expected Resolutions Relevant to Sexual Rights
- Accelerating efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls (Canada)
- Mandate of the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls (Mexico, Chile)
- Female genital mutilation (Ghana, on behalf of the African Group)
- Accelerating efforts to achieve women’s economic empowerment (Kyrgyzstan, Dominican Republic, Sierra Leone, Moldova, United Kingdom)
- Access to medicines, vaccines and other health products in the context of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Senegal, South Africa, Thailand)
- Human rights and climate change (Bangladesh, Philippines, Viet Nam)
- Rights to freedom of assembly and association (Czech Republic, Chile, Indonesia, Iceland, Lithuania, Maldives)
- Mandate of the Special Rapporteur on internally displaced persons (Austria, Honduras, Uganda)
- Safety of journalists (Austria, Brazil, France, Greece, Morocco, Qatar, Tunisia)
- Negative effects of corruption on human rights (Morocco, Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Indonesia, Poland, UK)
- Right to education (Portugal)
- Civil society space (Ireland, Chile, Japan, Sierra Leone, Tunisia)
- Human rights and international solidarity (Cuba)
- Social Forum (Cuba)
- Enhancement of international cooperation in the field of human rights (Uganda, on behalf of NAM)
- New and emerging digital technologies and human rights (Austria, Brazil, Denmark, Morocco, Singapore, Republic of Korea)
- Impact of arms transfers on human rights (Ecuador and Peru)
Sexual Rights-Related Panels
Annual full-day discussion on the human rights of women
Panel 1: Gender-based violence against women and girls in conflict, post-conflict and humanitarian settings
Time: Tuesday, 24 June 2025, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Panel 2: Commemoration of the International Day of Women in Diplomacy focusing on overcoming barriers to women's leadership in peace processes
Time: Tuesday, 24 June 2025, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Panel discussion on the realisation of the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation
Time: Thursday, 26 June 2025, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Annual panel discussion on the adverse impacts of climate change on human rights
Theme: Facilitating just transitions in the context of addressing the impacts of climate change on human rights
Time: Monday, 30 June 2025, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
See the list of all panels and concept notes
Sexual Rights-Related Reports
A/HRC/59/23
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967
Read the report when it becomes available »
A/HRC/59/26
Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel
Read the report when it becomes available »
A/HRC/59/27
Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Annual full-day discussion on the human rights of women
A/HRC/59/28
Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Intersessional meeting to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
A/HRC/59/29
Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Comprehensive report on access to medicines, vaccines and other health products in the context of the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health
A/HRC/59/31
Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Accelerating efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls: preventing and responding to all forms of violence against women and girls in criminal justice detention
A/HRC/59/39
Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Impact of the civilian acquisition, possession and use of firearms
A/HRC/59/40
Report of the Independent Expert on human rights and international solidarity
International solidarity and Indigenous Peoples
Read the report when it becomes available »
A/HRC/59/41
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to education
Safety in education
Read the report when it becomes available »
A/HRC/59/42
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change
The imperative of defossilizing our economies
Read the report when it becomes available »
A/HRC/59/44
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association
Impact of the 2023–2025 “super election” cycle on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association
A/HRC/59/45
Report of the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls
Gendered dimensions of care and support systems
Read the report when it becomes available »
A/HRC/59/46
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons
Internal displacement in the context of generalized violence
Read the report when it becomes available »
A/HRC/59/48
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health
Health and care workers as defenders of the right to health
A/HRC/59/49
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants
Phenomenon of migrants going missing or subjected to enforced disappearance – human rights analysis
A/HRC/59/50
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression
Freedom of expression and elections in the digital age
Read the report when it becomes available »
A/HRC/59/51
Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
Weathering the storm: poverty, climate change and social protection
A/HRC/59/52
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers
The right of Indigenous Peoples to maintain and develop justice systems
Read the report when it becomes available »
A/HRC/59/56
Report of the Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children
Migrant domestic workers and trafficking in persons: prevention, rights protection and access to justice
A/HRC/59/62 and A/HRC/59/63
Reports of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance
Read the reports when they become available »
UPR Outcomes
The 59th session will include the adoption of the outcomes of countries reviewed during the 48th working group session of the Universal Periodic Review, which took place from 20 to 31 January 2025. The council will adopt all 14 outcomes from the reviews of the following countries: Italy, the Gambia, Fiji, Kazakhstan, Iran, El Salvador, Bolivia, San Marino, Angola, Madagascar, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq and Egypt.
Among the 14 outcomes to be adopted during this session, the SRI collaborated on reports with organisations and activists to prepare reports for the UPR reviews of Angola, Bolivia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Angola
Ondjango Feminista and the Sexual Rights Initiative
Key Words: Rights of women and girls, violence against women, gender-based violence, domestic violence, obstetric violence, maternal mortality and morbidity, right to land, rights of refugees, rights of migrants, community land rights
Bolivia
IGUAL Bolivia, Diverse Trans Men from Bolivia, The LGBTI Litigants Network of the Americas and the Sexual Rights Initiative
Key Words: Rights of LGBTIQ+ people
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Sarajevo Open Centre and the Sexual Rights Initiative
Key Words: Comprehensive sexuality education, reproductive rights and justice, gender-based discrimination and violence, gender identity and expression, rights of transgender and gender diverse people, sexual orientation, rights of intersex people, LGBTIQ+
Sexual Rights Initiative Events
Save the date!
Beyond Conflation: A Rights-Based Approach to Trafficking and Sex Work
Side-event during the 59th session of the UN Human Rights Council
Wednesday, 25 June 2025, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm CET
Room XXV, Palais des Nations
This side event will address the harms caused by conflating sex work with trafficking, deriving from a paternalistic approach to sex work and denying sex workers their right to bodily autonomy & capacity to consent. The side event will emphasise the urgent need to recognise sex work as work – a human rights and practical imperative to prevent and eliminate all forms of discrimination.
A human rights approach to addressing the precarity of undervalued gendered labour
Side-event during the 59th session of the UN Human Rights Council
Thursday, 26 June 2025, 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm CET
Room XXV, Palais des Nations
The side event will shed light on the precarity of gendered labour, which is undervalued, underpaid, or completely rendered invisible and unwaged, and situate it within the current landscape of the capitalist and neoliberal economic paradigm. It will build on the upcoming report of the UN Working Group on the Discrimination against Women and Girls, focusing on the gendered dimensions of care and support systems, as an opportunity to address the precarious nature of gendered labour by including the redefinition, redistribution, and revalidation of labour.