The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has been campaigning against the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, over her interpretation of women’s sex-based rights under CEDAW.
Remarks by former Ambassador for Gender Equality Stephanie Campbell, contained in a departmental transcript released under FOI (reference LEX 1781, unpublished) reveal that DFAT was “directly engaging through various different mechanisms” because the Special Rapporteur had taken a “fairly difficult position on transgender rights” that “doesn’t conform with our views.”
DFAT’s internal response to CEDAW scrutiny
The transcript records Ms Campbell addressing an audience of public servants from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations and the Department of Education at an internal ‘Fireside Chat’ in September 2024. The document shows that Ms Campbell was asked about the UN Special Rapporteur’s concerns regarding Australia’s implementation of CEDAW: specifically, how the Government was engaging with Ms Alsalem’s findings and recommendations.
In response, former Ambassador Campbell said,
So that’s pretty tricky. I mean we’re very lucky to have Natasha Stott Despoja representing us as well. There’s been some tricky issues which [have] come out in the press on the special Rapporteur who’s taken a fairly difficult position on transgender rights in a way that doesn’t conform with our views on that. And those concerns have been raised within the Committee itself and we are directly engaging through various different mechanisms. But I do know that that is on Natasha’s agenda and something that she takes very seriously and is taking forward.
Natasha Stott Despoja, a former Australian senator, has served on the CEDAW Committee as an independent expert since 2020 – the first Australian member in almost thirty years.
How, when, and by what process did Australia decide that CEDAW no longer protects women on the basis of sex?
While the question sought clarification of the Special Rapporteur’s concerns, former Ambassador Campbell’s answer revealed something altogether different: rather than engaging with the Special Rapporteur to understand her position, the Government’s response was instead to counter Ms Alsalem’s views by “directly engaging through various different mechanisms.”
This raises a deeper question: When, how, and by what process did Australia decide that CEDAW no longer safeguards women on the basis of sex?
The treaty, which Australia ratified in 1983, was drafted on the basis of sex and has for decades been understood as a framework for eliminating discrimination against women on that basis. Yet the Government has unilaterally reinterpreted ‘sex’ within CEDAW to mean the social category ‘gender identity’ rather than biological sex. This has effectively redefined who qualifies as members of the sex class that CEDAW was designed to protect – without recorded Parliamentary or legal determination, or public consultation.
The Federal Court rejected this view
The Federal Court has been clear: CEDAW is not about gender identity. In Tickle v Giggle for Girls, Justice Bromwich held that the Sex Discrimination Act’s gender-identity provisions derive their support not from CEDAW (pp 4-5), but from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (p 4). In other words, the Court recognised that CEDAW continues to address discrimination on the basis of sex, not gender identity, and implicitly that the Convention has never been formally revised to alter this foundational requirement.
If the Government has nonetheless adopted the position that ‘sex’ within CEDAW now includes males who identify as women – thereby redefining the protected class – then it owes the public an explanation of when, how, and under whose authority such a redefinition of women’s sex-based rights occurred.
DFAT’s reinterpretation of CEDAW was never authorised by Parliament
When Parliament amended the Sex Discrimination Act in 2013, it explicitly confined the changes to new protected attributes – sexual orientation, gender identity, and intersex status – in specific domains such as employment. The Government’s own statements in Hansard show that it rejected any broader intention to reinterpret the Act; the 2013 amendments said nothing about CEDAW, and the parliamentary record confirms the Government understood this as a narrow, targeted change – not a reinterpretation of our international obligations.
Even the Australian Human Rights Commission, which has since become one of the chief advocates for a new interpretation of CEDAW, stated in its 2013 Senate submission that the SDA Bill “does not amend the existing SDA objects pertaining to gender equality or pertaining to discrimination on the grounds of sex…” The Commission was explicit: the 2013 amendments were confined to new protected attributes and left CEDAW’s foundational role unchanged.
This shift, then, has taken place not through law, but through bureaucracy – crafted in policy briefings and diplomatic talking points rather than Acts of Parliament. Critically, the Government has not argued that CEDAW now protects gender identity as a new category; rather, it has redefined ‘sex’ itself to include gender identity, thereby bringing transwomen within the original sex-based protections intended for women. The result is an echo chamber: our diplomats promote their own reinterpretation of CEDAW overseas, and then cite the CEDAW Committee’s responses as proof of international endorsement.
How Australia co-opts UN committee members
The Ambassador’s remarks illustrate how that dynamic operates in practice. Ms Campbell’s language suggests she and the Government view Ms Stott Despoja less as an independent member of the Committee than as a conduit for advancing Australian Government priorities.
CEDAW Committee members are elected to serve as independent experts, not as representatives of their governments (Article 17). This independence is foundational to how UN human rights mechanisms operate, and although Committee members are nominated by their governments, they are expected to assess human rights issues based on evidence and international law, not on instructions from the government that nominated them. Once appointed, they are supposed to vote and act according to their own expert judgment, and are accountable to the international human rights system.
Independence and accountability
By referring to concerns that are “on Natasha’s agenda” and that “she takes very seriously and is taking forward,” former Ambassador Campbell blurs the line between an independent committee member and a government representative, undermining the principle that CEDAW Committee members serve in a personal capacity under international law.
If Ms Stott Despoja regards the independence and accountability of her mandate as important, we would welcome her saying so – and explaining her position on CEDAW’s function in protecting women on the basis of sex.
What the Special Rapporteur actually does
Reem Alsalem has been the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls since August 2021. Her mandate requires her to examine the root causes and consequences of violence against women and girls, and to recommend measures to eliminate such violence.
In May 2023, Ms Alsalem expressed concerns about “the escalation of intimidation and threats against women and girls for expressing their opinions and beliefs regarding their needs and rights based on their sex and/or sexual orientation” particularly in the ‘Global North’ (by which she clearly meant to include Australia). She noted that women advocating for sex-based protections were being threatened, attacked, and vilified, with law enforcement agencies failing to provide necessary safeguards for women’s freedom of assembly and speech.
In September 2024, she criticised Australia’s Federal Court ruling in Tickle v Giggle, describing it as demonstrating “the concrete consequences that result when gender identity is allowed to supplant sex and override women’s rights to female-only services and spaces”. In May 2025, Ms Alsalem welcomed a landmark UK Supreme Court judgment affirming that sex in the UK Equality Act means biological sex.
In her July 2025 report on ‘Sex-based violence against women and girls: new frontiers and emerging issues’, Ms Alsalem warned that disregarding the reality of biological sex “has undermined the ability of States to identify, assess and eradicate male violence against women and girls,” and was giving rise to “new and evolving forms of violence.” She cautioned that “[p]olicies that seek to erase women as a group that experience discrimination based on their sex, as well as erase women-specific language, therefore do not only constitute unlawful discrimination but also violence against women and girls.”
The Special Rapporteur’s work is grounded in international human rights law and decades of feminist jurisprudence documenting that women face discrimination and violence because of our biological sex.
The Ambassador’s framing: evidence as ‘tactics’
The FOI transcript also reveals how the former Ambassador frames evidence-based feminist analysis. When Ms Alsalem raised concerns about surrogacy – specifically, how arrangements typically occur in contexts of inequality and power imbalance – Ms Campbell dismissed this not as a legitimate policy position, but as a political tactic designed to divide women.
In her discussion of surrogacy, the Ambassador appears to question the motives of feminists who oppose it, depicting feminist advocacy as strategic rather than principled. Ms Campbell stated:
One of the tools that they’re all using at the moment in a really interesting way is surrogacy where they’re bringing forward the whole idea that surrogacy is anti-women’s rights and it’s just wrong for women to be surrogates. Whereas the feminist side is very divided on that. Some are very supportive and some aren’t. So, they’re actually picking that up, that whole string of surrogacy, not for the issue itself but to be divisive within the community which is supporting gender equality. So, there’s all sorts of those tactics.
This characterisation is telling. Rather than engaging with the Special Rapporteur’s analysis – grounded in international human rights law and documented evidence of exploitation – the Ambassador treats feminist critique as a rhetorical tool. The effect is to delegitimise evidence-based analysis by suggesting it is motivated by divisiveness rather than principle.
AAWWA welcomes the Special Rapporteur’s 2025 report recognising surrogacy as a form of sex-based violence and her consistent focus on women’s sex-based rights in the face of growing policy erosion in Australia and overseas. Grounded in international human rights law, her reports and statements affirm that the rights of women and girls derive from biological sex and must not be subordinated to subjective identity claims.
This recognition is vital as Australian women’s organisations strive to defend female-only crisis services, medical services, prisons, sport and other contexts essential for safety and dignity. The Government’s failure to engage with such evidence-based analysis represents a retreat from CEDAW’s original purpose: to safeguard women on the basis of sex.
