UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls asking for UK input by 10 February 2024

[IwantToRetire]

Purpose: To inform the Special Rapporteur’s visit to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, scheduled to take place from 12 to 21 February 2024.

The visit of the Special Rapporteur will commence in London, and she will also undertake field visits, to both urban and rural areas in the different regions, in order to gain a first-hand understanding of the issues related to violence against women and girls as experienced by various segments of the population. During her visit, and as a means of gathering information from all relevant stakeholders, the Special Rapporteur intends to convene meetings with Government officials; representatives from civil society organizations; women’s organisations; community leaders; groups of women and girls; UN agencies; and other relevant stakeholders working towards the elimination of violence against women and girls in the country.

In preparation for the visit, the Special Rapporteur invites all interested individuals and organizations, including civil society organizations, women’s rights activists, and academics to provide inputs on:

1. Issues related to violence against all women and girls, based on intersecting grounds and including its different manifestations;
2. Information on groups of women and girls particularly at risk of being exposed to gender based violence;
3. Policies and legislation in place or being considered with a view to preventing and combating violence against women and girls.

While all submissions are welcome, the Special Rapporteur is particularly interested in receiving information on the following issues (the list is not exhaustive):

• Legal, institutional and policy frameworks related to violence against all women and girls and the extent to which relevant international and regional human rights obligations of the UK are adhered to;
• The adequacy of the legal and normative framework, including on
• femicide and honour killings;
• domestic violence including coercive control;
• rape and sexual violence;
• trafficking and sexual exploitation;
• parental alienation and child custody;
• exploitation of prostitution;
• sexual harassment in public spaces and at work;
• gender sensitive reception and asylum procedures;
• online violence;
• female genital mutilation;
• access to sexual and reproductive health;
• The implementation of constitutional guarantees, legal provisions and programmes aimed at eliminating violence against women and girls through strengthened capacity of municipal, regional and national representatives;
• Measures undertaken to increase the transparency, accountability, and effective participation by women and women’s organizations in the design of laws and policies related to ending discrimination and violence against women and girls the allocation and monitoring of the spending of relevant budget, as well as the provision of effective assistance and protection for victims of gender-based violence;
• The design and implementation of policies to ensure coordinated, gender-sensitive and comprehensive essential services for the survivors of gender-based violence against women;
• Access to effective justice mechanisms and guarantees of non-repetition to ensure that perpetrators of violence are brought to justice;
• Management shelters, protection orders and other integrated services for victims of gender-based violence against women and girls;
• Equal treatment and access to services for all women and girls who are in the UK and who may be victims of violence, irrespective of their origin, legal status, and other grounds;
• The capacity of stakeholders to collect and analyse and use data disaggregated by sex, gender, social group, disability, marital status, age, profession etc.;

Priority groups of women and girls

• Women and girl migrants, refugees, asylum-seekers;
• Stateless women and girls, or those who are at risk of statelessness;
• Lesbian, bisexual women or transgender;
• Members of racial, ethnic or religious minority communities;
• Women active in politics and public life (including sports);
• Women human rights defenders;
• Women and girls active in exercising their freedom of speech, thought and freedom of assembly;
• Mothers or daughters involved in child custody procedures.

If interested need to read the full notice which is very long https://www.ohchr.org/en/calls-for-input/2024/call-inputs-country-visit-united-kingdom-great-britain-and-northern-ireland

If you are a daughter mother or grandmother suffering from the real abuse of parental alienation please report it as outlined above to If interested need to read the full notice which is very long https://www.ohchr.org/en/calls-for-input/2024/call-inputs-country-visit-united-kingdom-great-britain-and-northern-ireland
Please note many feminists agree that parental alienation is a form of child abuse and must be addressed

One for the newly exonerated @jophoenix I'd have thought x

I partly posted as there was advance notice of her visit so thought some would be interested to participate in the way outlined (at great length).

However reading it through the language is depressing. In the same sections it talks about females and then uses the word gender.

And perhaps worse (IMO) includes "transgender" as part of lesbian and bisexual.

I realise the UN is totally captured, but would you have thought they would at least accept that not everybody shares their "beliefs" and have the curtesy to not lump transgender (an identity) in with same sex attraction.

And then this bit in the full notice:

During her visit, and as a means of gathering information from all relevant stakeholders, the Special Rapporteur intends to convene meetings with Government officials; representatives from civil society organizations; women’s organisations; community leaders; groups of women and girls; UN agencies; and other relevant stakeholders working towards the elimination of violence against women and girls in the country.

Which means she will just meet with the usual suspects, and want hear from women at the grass roots.

Do you suppose @MNHQ would like to invite her to be interviewed on mumsnet?

Just how many questions would she be inundated with I wonder?

Disabled girls and women are not a priority I see.

The UN framing is poor but Reem Alsalem is a real champion for women's rights. She spoke about Scotland's proposals for self-id to raise concerns about the effects on women and girls.

She's commented on the lack of evidence gathering about these effects on women and girls. So this is a great opportunity for any groups who have some evidence of - for example - self-exclusion from women's services that don't provide women-only services - to put their evidence forward. Even if it's self-selected groups and collections of personal experiences rather than formal studies and balanced surveys that's a good start. And the number of these experiences will carry weight.

The way I read it is at least open to the interpretation that the transgender people who are relevant to this visit are female.

And gender and sex are noted as separate data collection points. Which is great!

Reem discriminates against female victims of parental alienation and censored out their submissions to her very poorly researched paper on Parental Alienation victims of parental alienation are collateral damage to her brand of radical feminiam sadly. She ignored and ommitted the submissions from Alienated Children First Ireland Parental Alienation UK and la Dolca Vita Project NI she discounted them ass being from Men's Rights Activists altough 25-40% of vicitms of PA are Female and even though they are lead by three courageous women who have zero tolerance of abuse against any person. To see how poor her research was go to https://www.wir-vaeter.at/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/20230602-Analysis-Report-Special-Rapporteur.pdf

There is nothing to stop anyone from commenting on the call for "inputs" and asking for clarification or pointing out omissions.
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One of the issues for me is that in saying she will make an effort to meet groups etc., (in all parts of the UK?) is that individual women, smaller women's groups dont get that opportunity which I think means the overall picture will not be complete.

It was like a notice I read on Sex Matters about how they had had this meeting with "representatives" of women's groups (at the House of Commons or Lords?) and it was so disappointing. Talk about the usual suspects.

I think many of these newer single issue women's groups have very limited knowledge to the extent and range of women's grassroots and campaign groups.

Generally all of these top down "consultations" should make a point of either making the effort to engage at all levels of women's organisations and what used to be called unregistered associations, or just rely on written inputs.

Although it is more that likely that any "input" or email comment is going to be filtered through some UN employee.

In the days when grassroots feminism had to, because there was no internet, meet face to face. This would be the occasion to hold a local meeting and from the discussion forward points.

Although, nowadays the meeting would never get off the ground because if you tried to say it was women only, based on single sex exemptions, there would still be both men and women (not even trans people) kicking up a fuss just to show what an ally they were.

https://www.momjunction.com/articles/parental-alienation_00571430/
Maybe Reem needs to read this reality

I wonder if its worth posting on the Relationships board? Many women there have had negative experiences with the family courts.

https://www.womensaid.org.uk/family-courts-remain-an-unsafe-and-traumatic-place-for-women-and-children/