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MADRE ADVOCACY AT WORK

Ensuring Global Accountability for Gender Persecution

Targeted abuse against women, girls, and LGBTQIA+ people of all genders is rarely documented when it happens. As a result, these acts are often excluded from consideration by international and domestic trials and, in effect, are left out of history.

Gender persecution has occurred in conflicts globally. Alleged perpetrators have, for example, attacked girls’ schools in Afghanistan, tortured women in Mali because they deemed their skirts too short, and committed sexual violence against those perceived to be LGBTQI+ in Colombia. In order to strengthen accountability for such crimes, MADRE and our grassroots partners are working together to increase understanding of the crime of gender persecution and pushing national and international authorities to hold perpetrators accountable.

The Principles on Gender Persecution – Join Us!

Join us as we create guiding principles on gender persecution, focusing on prevention, protection, survivor participation, and relief and recovery.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) is developing a new set of Principles on the Crime of Gender Persecution, focusing on prevention, protection, survivor participation, and relief and recovery. Civil society groups are being asked to add their voice at the outset of the process to ensure that their communities and expertise are prioritized in the new Principles.

Thanks to a global grassroots movement, we have made major progress in raising greater awareness of the crime of gender persecution among key stakeholders. Now, the time has come to strengthen this work and expand this progress beyond accountability to other key areas of law and response to atrocities, including the pillars of prevention, protection, participation, and relief and recovery.

The Principles will develop a shared understanding of gender persecution and will strengthen recognition of and redress for gender-based crimes and discrimination before, during, and after conflict. This will create a shared community of practice and utilize multiple pillars of accountability to end cycles of violence and to help survivors access meaningful justice.

In December 2024, the results from global consultation into the Principles will be announced, and then the drafting of the Principles will commence in 2025. The end result will be the launch of the Principles  in October 2025 during the 25th anniversary of the UN Security Council’s Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security.

Join us!

Civil Society Convenings on the Gender Persecution Principles

MADRE is working with activists around the world to hold a series of civil society consultations to develop recommendations for the Principles on the Crime of Gender Persecution. Activists and legal experts from across the Americas gathered for the first convening in Bogotá in April 2024. Participants represent groups confronting gender-based violence, protecting reproductive rights, and supporting Indigenous, Afro-descendent, and LGBTQIA+ communities.

Then in May 2024 at the Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg, community advocates, health professionals, and experts came together to analyze gender persecution through a lens of Indigenous rights, Two-Spirit and LGBTQI+ rights, immigrant and refugee rights, intergroup conflict and reconciliation, and health equity, among other topics,

Similar meetings in three other continents will bring together gender persecution survivors, legal experts, and other representatives of communities affected by conflict or crisis all over the world to provide input on the Principles for the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor.

This document — and the process of developing it — can help spread the term “gender persecution” beyond courtrooms and help transform society. As one of the participants in the Bogotá meeting put it, “Naming … the crime of gender persecution is definitely an opportunity to investigate the structures of power.”

Read more about recommendations that emerged from the Bogotá gathering, as well as those from the Winnipeg meeting.

Download the April 2024 Bogota Convening Report EN & SP
Download the May 2024 Winnipeg Convening Report EN

Gender Persecution Observatory

Targeted violence against women, girls, and LGBTQIA+ people of all genders is rarely documented when it happens. As a result, these acts are often excluded from consideration by international and domestic trials and perpetrators are almost never held accountable.

Human rights defenders around the world are working to end gender persecution, the systematic violations of fundamental rights on the basis of gender. Today MADRE and CUNY Law’s Human Rights and Gender Justice Clinic are launching a new tool to bolster their efforts.

The new Gender Persecution Observatory is a web-based research hub providing real-time information about gender persecution in conflict. The Observatory, chaired by CUNY Law Professor Lisa Davis, launches with detailed case data of violence against women, girls, and LGBTQIA+ people of all genders in wars in Afghanistan, Ukraine, Colombia, and Iraq. It also contains detailed conflict analyses on gender persecution in wars spanning more than a dozen countries as far back as World War II. In the future, it will be continually expanded by legal experts and frontline groups.

The Gender Persecution Observatory launches at a turning point for how the world treats gender-based violence in conflict. The crime of “gender persecution” was codified as a crime against humanity a quarter century ago, but it is only this year that the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued its first verdict in a gender persecution case.

In 2022, the ICC prosecutor’s office issued a sweeping “Policy on the Crime of Gender Persecution,” and it is now working on developing Principles on the Crime of Gender Persecution to guide governments, human rights bodies, judicial actors, and humanitarian rights groups to help prevent this crime against humanity and respond appropriately when it does occur.

Major gender persecution cases could soon emerge from countries where the ICC has open investigations, especially Afghanistan. Recent rulings from Colombia’s transitional justice mechanism, the Special Jurisdiction for the Peace, are also establishing new benchmarks for addressing gender-based violence in conflict.

The Gender Persecution Observatory can be accessed here. The launch of the Gender Persecution Observatory marks a pivotal moment in the global effort to combat gender-based violence in conflict zones, providing an essential tool for accountability and justice that has the potential to transform how these crimes are documented, prosecuted, and ultimately prevented.

Policy Paper on Gender Persecution

In 2021, MADRE began its work as organizer of civil society engagement in the development of the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Policy of the Crime of Gender Persecution.

In December of 2022, the ICC published the Policy Paper in a grounding breaking moment for gender justice. While gender persecution, as a crime against humanity, was included in the Rome Statute, its perpetrators went with impunity because of a lack of understanding of the gender discrimination and unequal treatment at the root of these crimes.

This Policy Paper strengthens recognition of gender persecution in investigations and legal proceedings, reaffirms the understanding of gender in international criminal law, and provides clarity on a topic overlooked for too long.

This moment reaffirms – once and for all – that targeting women and LGBTQIA+ persons in peacetime and conflict can amount to a crime against humanity, and that survivors of these crimes cannot be silenced.

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