Thank you, Mr. Chair.
At this moment, we are living through concurrent health, economic, environmental and humanitarian crises. All of these have profound and differentiated gendered impacts, which are compounded by where women are socially, economically and geographically located. These impacts are undeniable and include sharply rising rates of femicide and gender-based violence, inability to access or pay for essential sexual and reproductive health services, increased unpaid care work, and more precarity, lower pay and fewer labour protections than men. These are not unfortunate and inevitable side effects of a world in turmoil, but an abject failure of human rights and those responsible for upholding them.
What makes this current moment in history particularly dangerous for women is that at the same time as these crises we are also witnessing rising anti-democratic sentiment within well-established democracies, an emergence of far-right and authoritarian regimes, an acceleration in the spread of disinformation, a deliberate erosion of trust in the institutions charged with upholding human rights norms and standards, and increased transnational organizing and funding among anti-human rights, white supremacist and anti-gender equality actors.
This confluence of events and actors has resulted in an unprecedented intensification of attacks on rights related to sexuality, gender and reproduction, those who defend them and the mechanisms we use to seek protection, remedy and accountability. This is happening online, in schools, in parliaments, in bureaucracies, in the courts and at the United Nations.
This past September, Afghan women human rights defenders addressed the UN Human Rights Council to demand that the international community act on women’s complete erasure from all aspects of public life since the Taliban took over. In Saudi Arabia, women have been sent to jail for decades under the state’s terrorism laws for tweeting. The recent protests in Iran, sparked by the killing of Gina Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for violating strict laws about what women can wear, are truly emblematic of the ways in which women’s rights and bodies are deeply tied to the nation state.
No country or region is immune, and it would be a mistake to think that violations of women's rights only happen in what we think of as repressive states. One only has to look at the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that reversed almost 40 years of federal abortion rights protections.
The question is, why do these actors target gender equality, and sexual and reproductive rights? Gender and sexuality are deeply symbolic and culturally meaningful concepts in all societies. Anti-democratic actors understand the potency of using issues that can be culturally contentious, such as abortion, trans rights, and sex ed to galvanize people to support them.
At the heart of many of these anti-rights movements is a commitment to the perpetuation of patriarchal families and systems that are hetero-normative and reproduction-oriented, and can only exist through the control of women’s bodies, sexuality and gender expression. As such, the realization of sexual and reproductive rights and gender equality is a direct challenge to autocrats and populist movements that have identified and targeted these rights as threats to their purpose. Feminist sexual and reproductive rights defenders are on the front lines of attacks against human rights and democracy and face enormous risks to their lives, livelihoods and the safety of their families.
When we are talking about access to abortion, gender-based violence or early and forced marriage, we are also talking about democracy, human rights, peacebuilding and freedom from tyranny. When we identify state and non-state actors organizing, financing and influencing democratic institutions to undermine bodily autonomy, women’s rights and the rights of LGBTQI persons, these are clear signs that democracy is under threat.
History has shown us that social justice, women’s rights and feminist movements have been at the forefront of the expansion and strengthening of human rights all over the world. Political scientists have long documented that advancement in women’s rights and democracy go hand in hand, as women’s political participation is a precondition for genuine democratic and egalitarian progress.
To turn the tide of cascading human rights violations against women, we need the strongest possible commitment to nationally driven feminist and social justice movements in all aspects of Canada's domestic and foreign policy.