AAWAA has again led a united coalition of independent feminist organisations from across Australia to strongly criticise the Australian Government’s draft national report to the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR), exposing serious gaps between government rhetoric and the lived experiences of women and girls. This coalition represents a significant alliance of long-standing, evidence-based advocates for women’s rights, and calls on the government to engage honestly, acknowledge regression, and significantly amend the draft report.
A call for urgent reform
The coalition’s submission is not merely a critique, but a constructive roadmap, containing ten detailed recommendations. These include:
- Restoring clear, statutory protection for female-only spaces and services
- Ensuring robust, genuine consultation with women’s organisations
- Restoring sex-disaggregated data collection and historic markers
- Clarity in law that sex-based rights are not to be eroded by self-identification
- Addressing institutional conflicts and failures in policymaking
- Independent review of anti-discrimination frameworks to ensure women’s advocacy is not suppressed