The Human Rights Council faces demands from more than 150 women’s and human rights organisations and 56 states to integrate gender in the Council’s permanent agenda and programme of work, including the review of the Special Procedures and the universal periodic review. Find out their demands.

Over 150 women’s and human rights groups signed a petition urging the Human Rights Council to integrate gender and women’s human rights into its work. The call was made in conjunction with the Fourth Regular Session of the Human Rights Council on March 28, 2007 in Geneva, Switzerland. About 56 states, with the same sentiments as that of the civil society organisations, are also calling for gender integration in the Council’s agenda setting, universal periodic review (UPR), and in the work of the Special Procedures, including the Special Rapporteurs, and working groups.

Among the recommendations are the following:
(1) On the Agenda and Programme of Work:
- Ensure at least one full day of discussion every year on the human rights violations suffered mainly or exclusively by women.
- Ensure adequate planning and capacity building for the Council to address the differential impact on women and girls of all human rights situations under its consideration.
(2) On the Review of the Special Procedures:
- Mandate gender integration and the explicit consideration of women’s and girls’ human rights under each relevant Special Procedure, and ensure adequate capacity building to allow for such integration.
- Continually identify protection gaps in areas of human rights violations that mainly or exclusively affect women and girls, and create a means to address these gaps.
(3) On the Universal Periodic Review:
- Integrate respect for human rights of women into the criteria on which states will be reviewed, whether qualitative or quantitative, with particular focus on gender-specific human rights violations.
- Explicit evaluation of the gender-specific criteria of the review in the UPR outcome mechanism for each state, utilising analysis and observations from treaty bodies and Special Procedures as appropriate.

Women's groups signatories to the petition include the following:
- Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law, and Development (APWLP),
- Asia Pacific Women’s Watch (APWW),
- CEDAW Watch-Philippines,
- Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL),
- Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN),
- African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET),
- International Women's Rights Action Watch (IWRAW),
- Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women's Rights (CLADEM),
- MADRE,
- Network of Popular Education Between Women (REPEM),
- Thai Women Watch (TW2)-Thailand,
- Women and Gender Institute (WAGI) of Miriam College,
- Women Living Under Muslim Law (WLUML), and
- Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO).

With the Human Rights Commission—the Council’s precursor institution—taking over 50 years to create a specific agenda item to deal with violations of women’s human rights, women’s groups are presently not taking any chances with the Council. They are lobbying for the Council’s permanent agenda to perceive women’s human rights as neither too specific nor too marginal; i.e., if the permanent agenda is too specific, new types of human rights violations may be excluded, whereas if the permanent agenda is too broad, issues that are seen as marginal may be lost.

The Human Rights Council was created in 2006 by the United Nations Member States with the goal to further strengthen the promotion and protection of human rights across the globe. It replaced the 60-year old Human Rights Commission that was abolished in the same year because states who are known human rights violators have regularly gained membership to block attempts of curbing abuses.

Related article:
“UN Human Rights Council: A step forward or a step back?” in we! June 2007, No. 1

Sources:
“Background: The Human Rights Council and Women’s Rights” from Human Rights Watch,
<http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/04/12/global15683.htm>.
“Petition to the UN Human Rights Council: Integrating the Human Rights of Women” from Human Rights Watch, <http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/04/12/global15684.htm>.