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Reem Alsalem
Jordanian civil servant From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Reem Alsalem (born 1976) is a Jordanian independent consultant and former civil servant. Since August 2021 she has served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls. She is gender-critical, and has been accused of being anti-trans by LGBT+ and women's groups.[1][2][3][4]
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Biography
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Alsalem was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1976.[5] She was educated at the American University in Cairo where she completed a master's degree in International Relations in 2001. She subsequently graduated from the University of Oxford in 2003 with a Masters in Human Rights Law.[6]
She was employed for 17 years as an international civil servant by the UNHCR where she worked with refugees in 13 countries.[7][8] She left in 2016 to work as an independent consultant on humanitarian and gender issues.[9] She speaks Arabic, English, French, German and Spanish.[7]
In 2021, Alsalem was one of 27 candidates who applied for the role of United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls. [10]
After she was elected as Special Rapporteur by the Human Rights Council, she listed five priorities for her work there:
- intersections between gender-based violence against women, sexual orientation and gender identity and expression;
- violence against indigenous women and girls;
- gender-based violence in the context of disaster risk reduction and climate change;
- psychological violence against women; and
- relationship between the condition of statelessness, gender, and gender-based violence.[9][11]
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Prostitution and pornography
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Alsalem has expressed support for the abolitionist approach to prostitution and voiced opposition to the pornography industry. She developed these views in her thematic report titled Prostitution and violence against women and girls, presented to the Human Rights Council in June 2024. She says prostitution is a consequence of patriarchal structures, economic inequalities, and conflict situations. She also highlights the intersection of racism and prostitution, saying that women and girls from marginalised groups, particularly those facing multiple forms of discrimination, are disproportionately affected and often enter the sex trade due to socioeconomic precarity.[12]
Legal and feminist scholars Susana T. Fried, Alice M. Miller, Rupsa Mallik, Ivana Radačić and Esteban Restrepo-Saldarriaga criticized Alsalem, saying that she misused evidence and ignored dissenting voices in her report on "prostitution and violence"; they wrote that "there is no agreement in international human rights law about what laws best protect the rights of people who sell sex" and that "evidence is strong that criminal law making both the buying and selling of sex a crime hurts the very people who are most at risk".[13]
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Transgender rights
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In 2023 Alsalem attended the gender-critical FiLiA conference amid protests against the conference.[14] The same year, an open letter published by the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID),[15][16][2] endorsed by over 550 NGOs and women's groups, accused her of being "anti-trans", which she denies.[16][4] In July, legal scholar Jens Theilen said that Alsalem "is using women's rights as a tool to undermine trans rights" and considered her actions "a stark example of individual politics furthering rather than contesting oppression," citing the AWID letter.[1]
In January 2024, Alsalem criticised the composition of a World Health Organization (WHO) committee, saying that most committee members had "strong, one-sided views in favour of promoting hormonal gender transition and legal recognition of self-asserted gender" and that none of them was an expert in adolescent development.[17] In February, she opposed the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill and claimed it could "open the door for violent males."[18] Her views were disputed by the United Nations Independent Expert on sexual orientation and gender identity, Victor Madrigal-Borloz, and the spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights who said that "everyone (...) should have access to legal recognition of their gender identity based on self-identification."[18] Six feminist organizations in Scotland—Engender, JustRight Scotland, Scottish Women's Rights Centre, Scottish Women's Aid, Amnesty International Scotland and Rape Crisis Scotland—also expressed disappointment by Alsalem's comments, accusing her of failing to speak with Scottish human rights or feminist organisations before her statements.[19]
In April, Alsalem opposed President Biden’s Title IX policies for transgender youth in the U.S[20]
In October Alsalem also criticized the Self-Determination Act that entered into force in Germany.[21] International law scholar Selin Altay criticized Alsalem for her position on the Self-Determination Act, saying that Alsalem has long faced criticism for holding anti-trans views. Altay argues that Alsalem fails to fulfill her mandate as special rapporteur if she does not actively defend the right to gender self-determination. According to Altay, Alsalem is responsible for addressing all forms of violence against women at the international level, including violence against trans women falls within her mandate to uphold the right to gender self-determination.[22]
In February 2025, Alsalem supported Donald Trump's executive order "Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports," which allows the federal government to withhold funding from schools which allow transgender students to compete on women's teams.[23]
In July Alsalem presented her report "Sex-based violence against women and girls". The report called on states to "ensure that the terms 'women' and 'girls' are only used to describe biological females" and referred to trans women as "males who identify as women or girls."[24] It claimed there are "long-lasting and harmful consequences of social and medical transitioning" and recommended banning medical and social transition for minors and providing them psychological treatment to "address underlying neuro-developmental, psychological, or other conditions". It praised restrictions on trans healthcare in the Netherlands, the U.K., and Brazil. It falsely claimed 80% of "childhood gender distress" would disappear at puberty, that "female detransitioners" were overwhelmingly gay and transitioned due to internalized homophobia, and that autistic children are developing socially contagious gender dysphoria as a coping strategy. It cited anti-trans organizations such as LGB Alliance and For Women Scotland. The report claimed that trans identities threaten to erase women and praised the outcome of For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers. The report was criticized by LGBT advocates and researchers such as the Human Rights Campaign, OutRight Action International.[25][26][27] The christian advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom supported Alsalem for resisting "gender ideology".[28]
According to Hannah Barnes for the New Statesman, "her insistence on recognising the difference between sex and gender has landed her in trouble."[4] German LGBT+ magazine Queer.de reported that Alsalem has long been considered anti-trans by LGBT+ organizations, saying that she was strongly criticized by hundreds of women's rights organizations as well for her anti-trans views.[2]
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War between Israel and Palestine
Alsalem was criticised in 2023 by Claire Waxman, London's Victims' Commissioner, as she did not speak out on reports of sexual and gender-based violence in the 7 October attack on Israel against Israeli women during and following the Hamas-led attack.[4] In response, Alsalem said she had condemned "what happened on 7 October", had contacted NGOs in Israel without reply, and said she could not make "sweeping statements" without receiving evidence.[4]
In 2024, Alsalem said that "grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian law" had been committed in Gaza by Israeli troops.[4] In a formal statement alongside the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, she described "credible" allegations of "multiple forms of sexual assault", such as rape and strip-searches, against Palestinian women and girls.[4][29][30] Israel denied the allegations.[4][31]
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Other topics
In February 2024, Alsalem criticised the UK's strategies for combatting violence against women and girls. She said: "Entrenched patriarchy at almost every level of society, combined with a rise in misogyny that permeates the physical and online world, is denying thousands of women and girls across the UK the right to live in safety, free from fear and violence."[32]
References
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