On Friday, coalition members submitted four reports to the Universal Periodic Review ahead of the 54th session in January. The UPR is the UN’s peer-review mechanism for human rights accountability, giving states across the world’s regions the opportunity to examine one another’s human rights records and issue recommendations for improvement.
We launched our UPR engagement earlier this year as part of our expanded strategic direction to end violence against women and girls through international law. Our recommendations centre on ending violence against all women and girls and are grounded in the expertise of coalition members.
This cycle, coalition members from Sudan, Syria, Uganda and Zimbabwe submitted reports addressing the realities facing women and girls in their countries, from child marriage to conflict-related sexual violence. Each submission puts forward recommendations shaped by direct research and testimony on the ground.
Sudan: Protecting Women and Girls Amid Ongoing Conflict
Among the voices shaping this cycle is a coalition member from Sudan, whose submission reflects the realities of advocating for women’s rights amid ongoing conflict. The submission focuses on three priority areas: Violence and discrimination against women and girls, sexual violence in conflict, and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
Sudan’s review comes at a moment the coalition member describes as anything but a typical governance check-in. The country has been in an active, foreign-backed war since April 2023, with mass displacement and widely documented atrocities shaping daily life. In the previous UPR cycle, Sudan declined to ratify CEDAW, a gap she says the war has only made more urgent to close. Conflict-related sexual violence has surged, while legal barriers continue to deny survivors timely access to abortion and other essential care.
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, in domestic legislation.
- Strengthening 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 transition, marked by a documented pattern of abductions targeting Alawite women and girls and by women’s near-total exclusion from the political process that is reshaping the country. For women in Syria, the transition has so far meant fewer protections rather than more. Women have also been almost entirely excluded from political power in the transition.
Laila Nukiry’s central recommendation 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 the Nationality Law so Syrian women can confer citizenship on their children on an equal basis with men.
- Establishing a National Task Force on Gender Equality in Family Law by June 2027.
Uganda: Closing the Gap Between Law and Practice on Child Marriage
34% of girls are married before the age of 18, 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 with 12% of Ugandan households now headed by children or youth aged 15–24 . For girls in Uganda, the law exists on paper, but enforcement has stalled where it matters most.
The 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 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 by June 2027
Zimbabwe: Sexual Violence, Child Marriage, and Healthcare Access in Apostolic Communities
The 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, closing a gap that currently leaves such cases prosecuted, if at all, as ordinary murder.
This review comes against a backdrop of 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 in Zimbabwe, existing legal protections routinely go unenforced, whether against violence, child marriage, or preventable death from denial of medical care.
Other recommendations include:
- Ratify the Optional Protocol to CEDAW (OP-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 by 2027.
- Investigating and prosecuting, as criminal matters, the deaths of girls linked to child marriage and denial of maternal healthcare.
Every Woman launched its UPR engagement as part of its expanded strategy to end violence against all women and girls in April with two submissions for the 53rd Cycle. These four reports double our efforts to hold governments accountable for their commitments.
