In February, 2025, Feminists in Struggle joined with over 500 organizations and 5000 individuals in signing the “Global support letter for the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, its causes and consequences, Reem Alsalem” (1).
Ms. Reem Alsalem became the 5th person to hold the mandate as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls (UNSRVAWG) in August of 2021. This role was established in 1994 (resolution 1994/45) by the UN Human Rights Council (formerly the Human Rights Commission) for an independent human rights expert to specifically examine the global problem of violence against women and girls and recommend actions to end it (2).
The United Nations defines violence against women as: “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life” (3).
Ms. Alsalem has been tirelessly speaking out about the systemic oppression of women and girls, state-sanctioned violence, and dramatic losses of previously held civil rights and protections occurring in countries around the world, from United States to Afghanistan. She has refused to adopt the re-branded “newspeak” seeking to call acts of genital mutilation or prostitution by more sanitized names. She remains steadfast and focused on the realities facing women and girls as a sex-class, within a global context. Utilizing a radical feminist and gender critical analysis, she seeks to truly root out the ‘causes and consequences’ of violence against women and girls and takes a strong stand on behalf of female sexual survivors, presenting groundbreaking research centering these marginalized voices within her reports.
At the 56th session of the the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva last June, 2024, Reem Alsalem presented her comprehensive Report on Prostitution and Violence Against Women and Girls, the first of its kind to focus solely on the consequences of prostitution on the lives of women and girls (4). In this document, she refuses to pander to the demand to re-language prostitution as “sex work” and identifies this as an attempt to sanitize sexual exploitation by repackaging (remarketing) it as empowering to women and as a valid form of labor, just like any other job. She sees through the attempts to frame pornography as anything other than “filmed prostitution” and above all, she highlights the voices of survivors who have exited prostitution and work toward abolition.
By focusing on the evidence offered by survivors and those who serve them “rather than ideological fervor,” her report provides a thorough review of all of the available data and research, which documents the clear and significant harms caused to women and girls involved in prostitution, pornography, and other forms of sexual exploitation – and how the normalization of these behaviors continues to support the escalation of violence against women and girls everywhere (5).
We as FIST stand with and celebrate Reem Alsalem for her work and join her and other organizations in speaking out against the propaganda campaigns of criminals and their financiers who seek to exploit, commodify, oppress, and deny basic human rights to women and girls across the world.
References:
- “Global support letter for Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, its causes and consequences.” Women’s Platform for Action, February 21, 2025. https://www.womensplatformforaction.org/global-support-letter/
- https://www.ohchr.org/en/about-mandate
- http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/vaw/v-overview.htm
- Alsalem, Reem, “Prostitution and violence against women and girls: Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences.” United Nations, Human Rights Council, Fifty-sixth session, 18 June–12 July 2024. A/HRC/56/48*
https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g24/078/81/pdf/g2407881.pdf
Alsalem, Reem, “Response to a Political Critique and Personal Attack Against a United Nations Report that Presented New Evidence About Prostitution as a Cause and Consequence of Violence Against Women and Girls,” Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence: Vol. 10: Iss. 1, Article 6, 2025. https://doi.org/10.23860/dignity.2025.10.01.06