HRC 56

The 56th session of the UN Human Rights Council took place from 18 June to 12 July 2024. The ongoing liquidity crisis experienced by the United Nations, which deeply affects the Council’s functioning, has once again put civil society organisations under an additional and significant burden - especially when it comes to accessing hybrid modalities and organising side events. Below, you will find information on some of the key sexual rights-related: Resolutions Panel discussions Oral statements UPR Outcomes Side Events

We welcome the recommendations made to Malaysia on the ratification of the 1951 Refugee Convention (and its protocol) and regret the noting of the same. Malaysia currently fails to adequately recognise refugee status, and UNHCR registration provides only limited protection against arbitrary arrest, detention and refoulement. Malaysia is yet to provide clarity on how it determines the refugee status of detainees, and indeed the UNHCR has been denied access to immigration detention centres for almost five years now. This is concerning given current policies and the prevailing climate of xenophobia towards refugees and migrants.

We regret the noting of recommendations pertaining to providing access to information and education on sexual and reproductive health. Nigeria is failing to meet its obligations to provide such information, with private institutions left to bridge the gap in access to evidence-based, accurate information. Everyone has the right to learn about one’s body, sexuality, and sexual and reproductive health. We call on Nigeria to ensure access to comprehensive sexuality education for all, as part of its obligation to ensure that everyone enjoys the right to a quality education.

We echo the report’s call on States to repeal all laws and policies that penalise individuals for structural inequality, and to move away from punitive and carceral approaches.

There is overwhelming evidence showing that the criminalisation of drug use and of sex work is deeply discriminatory, disproportionately affecting people on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity and class. It also increases exposure to physical and sexual violence. It is also used as a driver of other harmful policies, for instance by restricting access to safe housing and shelter, as well as to safe places of work and labour rights for sex workers.

Human rights economy seeks to prioritize investment in economic, social and cultural rights, as well as the right to development. However, the transformative potential of a human rights economy will remain hollow without addressing the global financial architecture as a colonial structure that exerts control over countries in the Global South through debt burdens, austerity measures, structural adjustment programs and loan conditionalities through international financial institutions.

We urge States to heed the Working Group’s recommendations related to the realization of individual and collective rights to substantive equality, including guaranteeing the right to decent work, comprehensive social protection, and repealing laws criminalizing poverty. International and regional economic, financial and monetary institutions and their member States must move away from the growth-centered and neoliberal paradigm that are root causes of inequalities.

Economic violence against women and girls, as with many other forms of gender-based violence, is rooted in patriarchal, racist, classist systems of oppression. In the last decades, structural conditions created by global capitalism and neoliberal policies, combined with those first mentioned, have added new dimensions, causes and consequences.

We support the Special Rapporteur’s recommendations to States to move away from criminal approaches to drug use and control frameworks and rather adopt an evidence-based, human rights approach. Moreover, access to medicines is a human right that must not be impeded by policies that favour corporate interests over people’s health and rights.

In collaboration with the Global Network of Sex Work Project, SRI supported a delegation of sex workers from different countries to participate in the 56th session of the Human Rights Council. This delegation also benefited from the support of the Count me In! Consortium and the Our Voices, Our Future Consortium.

Evidence collected over 25 years by Amnesty International in Norway and Ireland, Médecins du Monde in France has consistently demonstrated that criminalisation as recommended by the SR VAW, has been responsible for increasing the economic vulnerability, worsening the quality of life of sex workers everywhere this system is implemented.

As a mother, I am offended by the report’s assertion that sex workers are bad mothers and our children are a result of violence who will end up getting stolen, trafficked, raped and killed. I have chosen sex work to be my profession, but this is not my whole reality. Before I am a sex worker, I am many things. My rights should not be denied because of my job.

As a sex worker and sex worker advocate, I and my community find this report problematic and harmful. As a feminist, I object to the report because it denies our agency and autonomy.

The greatest violence we sex workers suffer is based on stigma, discrimination, and police persecution. We need sex work to be recognized as what it is: a job.

The first form of violence is that people refuse to hear our voices and impose moral judgments against us. Our voices as sex workers must be heard. To protect ourselves from violence, we need labor law, the recognition of sex work as work, and respect for our choices as sex workers.

24 June 2024 - 15h00 - 16h00 CET In person: Room XXV, Palais des Nations

The 56th session of the UN Human Rights Council will take place from 18 June to 12 July 2024. Below you can find information about: Anticipated sexual rights-related resolutions, panels and reports UPR outcomes SRI’s side event taking place during the 56th session