That is why concrete commitments matter. The Human Rights Council should formalise the consultation mechanisms with sex worker organisations, ensuring that community expertise directly informs all of the processes, integrate sex work into broader intersectional agendas.

The Human Rights Council is not immune from these pressures. It is facing growing attempts by the states to weaken what has been built over the decades. In this context, the council cannot remain neutral.  

We need to stand together as oppressed communities.

Care is a labour rights issue. Care workers demand decent wages and working conditions as well as representation. "

This extraction of value is not only for the benefit of individual men, but for society as a whole and for states who have an excuse to fail to provide for services that fall within human rights scope, especially social, cultural, and economic rights.

"Nothing related to gender can be considered a private issue because gender is not confined to the private sphere.

It plays a role in public life, and it structures societies.

And many of the countries that have received these recommendations have since changed their abortion laws to expand access, including Ireland, Argentina, Chile, Benin, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, and others."

We've seen the number of UPR recommendations on abortion rise from 35 in the first cycle to 240 in the third cycle.

"The UPR is one of the most accessible avenues for national advocates to engage in the UN system in a way that is relevant to their context. And it's particularly useful for issues such as abortion that are highly stigmatised and neglected at the country level.

While the Council adopted by consensus the resolution on preventable maternal mortality and morbidity, this progress stands in contrast with the broader failure of the international system to respond to intersecting crises and uphold the universality and indivisibility of human rights.

Calls for accountability were also reflected in the International Safe Abortion Day joint statement, endorsed by over 230 organisations and individuals, which linked reproductive justice to broader struggles against impunity in Gaza, Sudan, and the DRC. : abortionstatement.org

Realising sexual rights, therefore, requires advancing the self-determination and collective liberation of all peoples.

Sexual rights are shaped and constrained by interconnected global crises, unchecked extractivism, climate degradation, violent populism and toxic nationalism, widening inequalities within and between states and entrenched patriarchal, racist, classist, and ableist systems of oppression.

For us, sexuality is, at its core, about power. Understanding power in its structural forms is essential: without accountability and solidarity, sexual rights cannot be fully realised.

As the UN multilateral system faces mounting crises of legitimacy and liquidity, it is more urgent than ever to defend and expand spaces where civil society can actively hold states accountable for their human rights obligations. Read our round-up: www.sexualrightsinitiative.org/news/2025-oc...

The ongoing genocide in Gaza for the last two years has proven beyond doubt that the international system lacks willingness to hold Israel accountable.

We cannot afford to continue to treat sexual rights as separate from global economic governance. "

Cross-mandate collaboration would be essential. Special Rapporteurs on health, poverty, foreign debt, and others should jointly address these intersections.

Special procedures and treaty bodies should explicitly examine how debt, austerity and privatisation affect SRHR. UPR recommendations should go beyond laws and policies to scrutinise fiscal and budgetary choices and their impact on people.

"The Human Rights Council must integrate an economic analysis into its work and hold those institutions, international financial institutions, accountable, as well as states implementing these policies and the states dictating them.

"There can be no genuine accountability on sexual rights without confronting the economic policies that structures people's ability to access healthcare, contraception, and safe childbirth, among other rights."