Photo courtesy of Tanzania Child Welfare
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is the UN’s peer-review mechanism for human rights accountability—one that civil society plays a central role in shaping. On Friday, ahead of the 54th Session in January, Every Woman submitted reports on behalf of coalition members in four countries that will be under review as part of our expanded strategy to end violence against all women and girls through international law.
These four reports double our efforts to hold governments accountable for their commitments and give the UN a clear view of the situation on the ground for women and girls and targeted recommendations for ending violence against all women and girls.
This cycle, coalition members from Sudan, Syria, Uganda and Zimbabwe called for action on a wide range of issues, including ending child marriage to addressing conflict-related sexual violence.
Sudan: Protecting Women and Girls Amid Ongoing Conflict
Among the voices shaping this UPR cycle is a human rights professional in Sudan, whose recommendations on violence and discrimination against women and girls, sexual violence in conflict, and female genital mutilation (FGM) come while the country is engaged in an active, foreign-backed war that led to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Mass displacement and widely documented atrocities shape daily life for women and girls.
In the country’s last cycle in 2022, Sudan declined to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and war has only made accountability more pressing. The UPR provides a formal channel to document the surge in conflict-related sexual violence and put forward recommendations to remove legal barriers for survivors, she says.
Her submission calls on the Sudanese government to ratify CEDAW and its optional protocol without reservations, and to reform domestic legislation.
Other recommendations include:
- Amend Article 135 to ensure survivors of rape can access abortion services without barriers.
- Amend the Evidence Act of 1994 to align with the 2015 rape law reforms, and explicitly recognise conflict-related sexual violence, including wartime rape.
- Strengthen enforcement of Article 141 on FGM, including training for frontline workers and a dedicated reporting mechanism for displacement settings.
- Ratify the Maputo Protocol to reinforce domestic FGM enforcement through an international accountability mechanism.
Syria: Protection and Political Participation in the Post-Transition Period
Syria’s review comes at a fragile moment in the country’s political transition, marked by a documented pattern of abductions targeting Alawite women and girls and by women’s near-total exclusion from the political process reshaping the country. For women in Syria, the abductions have instilled fear in all women, curtailing their right to move, to study, to work, to live.
Coalition member Layla Nukiry, a human rights advocate and researcher who authored the recommendations, calls on the Government of Syria to publicly acknowledge the documented pattern of abductions targeting Alawite women and girls and conduct prompt, independent investigations into all reported cases — including those implicating state security institutions — with prosecutions proceeding regardless of perpetrators’ factional affiliation.
Other recommendations include:
- Establishing safe, confidential, gender-sensitive reporting mechanisms staffed by trained female investigators
- Integrating abduction cases into the mandates of the National Commission for Transitional Justice and the National Commission for the Missing
- Guaranteeing gender parity on all bodies drafting the permanent constitution, electoral law, or transitional-justice mechanisms
- Reporting to the CEDAW Committee within 18 months on measures taken to fulfil women’s equal political participation
- Amending national laws so Syrian women can confer citizenship on their children on an equal basis with men
- Repealing or suspending Circular No. 17, restoring judicial discretion to appoint guardians based on the best interests of the child and amending personal status laws to recognise mothers as equal legal guardians (waliyyah) alongside fathers.
Uganda: Closing the Gap Between Law and Practice on Child Marriage
Thirty-four per cent of girls are married before the age of 18 in Uganda, despite a legal minimum age of 18 under the Children Act. The practice is most entrenched in Eastern and Northern Uganda, the Rwenzori sub-region, and parts of Buganda, driven by poverty, gender inequality, and increasingly by orphanhood and displacement. For girls in Uganda, the law exists on paper, but enforcement has stalled where it matters most.
Our coalition member’s central recommendation calls on the Government of Uganda to close the implementation gap in its National Strategy to End Child Marriage and Teenage Pregnancy, including by releasing the domestic budget it has already committed to and strengthening coordination between the education, health, and justice sectors, building on a recommendation Uganda itself accepted in its last review cycle.
Other recommendations include:
- Amending the Marriage Act to close the loophole permitting marriage below 21 with parental or judicial consent, aligning it with the Constitutional Court’s 2023 ruling
- Rolling out adolescent health education and pregnancy-prevention guidance in Karamoja, West Nile, Busoga, and Rwenzori
- Establishing dedicated child protection and gender-based violence referral pathways for refugee youth, with published data on child marriage prevalence in settlements
Zimbabwe: Sexual Violence, Child Marriage, and Healthcare Access in Apostolic Communities
Zimbabwe is experiencing some of the highest intimate partner violence rates in sub-Saharan Africa, alongside a pattern of ritual killings that remains largely unprosecuted as a distinct crime. For women and girls, existing legal protections routinely go unenforced, whether against violence, child marriage, or preventable death from denial of medical care.
Our recommendations call on the Government of Zimbabwe to amend the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act to introduce ritual killing as a distinct crime with aggravated sentencing, paired with a dedicated forensic investigation unit within the Zimbabwe Republic Police.
Other recommendations include:
- Ratify the Optional Protocol to CEDAW to subject Zimbabwe’s compliance with gender-based violence obligations to independent international monitoring.
- Accelerating birth registration in rural and religious settings so the minimum marriage age is enforceable in practice.
- Making it a mandatory reporting obligation for traditional and religious leaders to notify authorities of suspected child marriages, with criminal liability for those who facilitate them.
- Investigating and prosecuting as criminal matters the deaths of girls linked to child marriage and denial of maternal healthcare.
