Universalising Gender Equality Norms: CEDAW’s critical role in protecting women’s SOGIESC rights
February 2023
- Theme: CEDAW, LGBTIQ.
- Type: Thematic Paper.
- Region/Country: Global.
- Language: English.
Over the past few years, the ‘anti-gender’ movement has established itself to be one of the most concerning threats to women’s human rights advocacy. Successful capture of women’s rights language spaces has further galvanised ‘anti-gender’ actors to take their harmful narratives to various decision-making, human rights and development platforms across the world. At the brunt of the movement and its outcomes are marginalised communities of transgender, intersex and genderqueer persons, whose rights are under attack now more than ever.
IWRAW Asia Pacific’s white paper rebuts the ‘anti-gender’ movement’s so-called ‘gender ideology’ and expounds the fact that human rights—especially women’s rights—on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sexual characteristics (SOGIESC) is a protected category within international human rights law as set out by the UN Treaty Body system, with a specific focus on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).