“The ordinary meaning of sex is biological sex,” says Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls.
In an interview with The Women’s Advocate during her visit to Australia, Ms Alsalem discussed CEDAW, the relationship between sex and gender, and what she regards as emerging or underexplored forms of violence against women and girls.
She also discussed prostitution and pornography, surrogacy, family-court processes, digital and AI-generated violence, and the importance of retaining a dedicated UN mandate on violence against women and girls. The full video interview is available below.
What does CEDAW mean by ‘sex’?
Ms Alsalem described CEDAW as “the most comprehensive standalone instrument” dedicated to women’s equality and protection from discrimination. She said, however, that the duty not to discriminate based on sex is not limited to CEDAW, referring also to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Charter and other international treaties.
She said these instruments did not define sex. In her view, it was not foreseen that a definition would be required: “It didn’t define women, but at the same time, it was always sort of understood what we were referring to.” Ms Alsalem said treaty interpretation requires attention to the ordinary meaning of the words used, as well as the treaty’s object and purpose. “The ordinary meaning of sex is biological sex,” she said.
She added that a coherent approach to a convention on women means that it applies to “women, which means females, which means biologically females”.
What about gender identity?
The Women’s Advocate asked how governments should interpret CEDAW so that women and girls who experience discrimination because of other characteristics, including gender identity, are protected without redefining sex or weakening women’s sex-based protections and rights.
Ms Alsalem said CEDAW recognises that discrimination on the basis of sex should not occur, and that discrimination may also arise on intersecting grounds. She said that, if that language is to remain within the ordinary meaning and objective of the treaty, “that can only mean women who don’t identify as women”. She said there was “no other coherent way” to understand it.
Ms Alsalem also addressed the term ‘gender-based violence’. She said it does not negate discrimination and violence based on sex; rather, it concerns the meaning society gives to a person’s role as either a man or a woman. “It builds on sex. It doesn’t negate it,” she said.
What forms of violence concern her?
Ms Alsalem said she has chosen to focus on emerging or underexplored issues, and on matters that governments and societies are still working through in law and policy.
She identified prostitution, including what she calls online prostitution; surrogacy; the conflation of sex and gender; and family-court processes that, in her view, can operate systematically against mothers. She referred in particular to gender bias and to the use of parental-alienation allegations against mothers who raise credible allegations that their children have been abused by a partner or former partner.
She said these issues have a substantial impact on women and girls and have not been adequately examined from a human-rights perspective. She described them as a “new frontier” for violence against women and girls.
“The patriarchy is also very smart,” Ms Alsalem said. “It keeps reinventing itself. It keeps trying to subjugate and control women in new and convoluted ways.”
What is her position on pornography?
Ms Alsalem said she addresses pornography as ‘online prostitution’. She said she had already raised this in her report on prostitution and considers that abolitionist countries should expand, or formally extend, the scope of their abolitionist policy to cover online prostitution, including pornography.
She referred to Sweden as one country that has done this, while adding that its implementation should be assessed. She said pornography is “a cause of so many very concerning forms of violence against women and girls”.
She also said pornography normalises harmful sex and gender stereotypes and harmful relations between men and women, boys and girls. She said it would be useful to examine the range of policies states have, or do not have, in light of their human-rights obligations.
Why focus on girls?
Ms Alsalem said she had recently released an upcoming report on violence against older women, whom she described as a group of women that is not spoken about sufficiently and is “very invisible”.
She said she wants to address the continuum of violence experienced by females, which does not begin at the age of 18 and does not end at a particular stage of life. She therefore intends to prepare a stand-alone report on violence against girls.
Ms Alsalem said girls are experiencing increasing pressures, harm and exposure to violence. She identified digital and AI-generated violence; the erasure or undermining of sex, female-only spaces and sex-based protections and rights; and the normalisation of prostitution and pornography as among the concerns she raised in this context.
She said she had proposed adding ‘girls’ to the title of the mandate, which had for most of its history been called the mandate on violence against women. She said this was intended to emphasise the continuum of violence and that she wanted to complete that work by dedicating a report to girls.
Why retain a dedicated mandate?
Ms Alsalem said the UN’s financial difficulties have led to discussions about reform of the UN system, including whether Special Rapporteur mandates might be combined. She noted that the mandates on trafficking and slavery had been merged.
She said it is important to retain a mandate specifically dedicated to violence against women and girls. While acknowledging the work of the CEDAW Committee and the Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls, she said that folding violence into a broader discrimination issue would dilute the focus and reduce the mandate’s impact.
She described violence against women and girls as “really male violence against females” and said states should remain vigilant against efforts to save resources at the expense of this dedicated work.
You can watch the interview above, or listen on Spotify or Apple.