Comparative data collected to measure progress on the Sustainable Development Goals demonstrate a downward trajectory for women and girls between 2020–2022.[i] COVID-19 pushed 47 million women and girls into extreme poverty, with an estimated 383 million women and girls living in extreme poverty in 2022.[ii] Gender-based violence and domestic abuse increased due to lockdowns, the closure of shelters and support services and efforts diverted to emergency pandemic responses.[iii] Worldwide, an estimated 129 million girls were out of school.[iv]

LGBTQIA+ people also experienced a global erosion of their status during this period. Anti-LGBTQIA+ violence increased in many places, including the United States, where LGBTQIA+ people, particularly transgender people, also saw their legal protections eroded. In other countries, such as South Africa, LGBTQIA+ people were excluded from emergency economic measures established during COVID-19.[v] LGBTQIA+ people in Tunisia continue to face forcible marriage and physical threats if they express themselves in public.[vi] LGBTQIA+ people in Uganda continue to face criminal prosecution and punishment, potentially including the death penalty.[vii]

Beyond problems exacerbated by the pandemic, the predicament of gender equality continues to face many challenges. Women’s participation and representation continued to fall short in legislatures, truth commissions and other key decision-making positions around transitional justice. As of January 1, 2023, only 26.5 percent of all members of parliaments globally were women, reflecting a slight, 1-percent increase from the previous year.[viii] Women in The Gambia, Guinea and Venezuela , among other countries, were denied adequate representation in formal peace and transitional justice processes.[ix] Despite leading and managing much of the humanitarian response and volunteer work to support those impacted by war, women routinely report that they are not equally represented in decision-making by either local governing entities or humanitarian organizations acting locally.[x] In Afghanistan, the Taliban administration has adopted a number of policies eroding women’s rights and freedoms since its August 2021 takeover, including replacing the Ministry of Women’s Affairs with the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, requiring all women to cover their faces in public, restricting women’s movement, banning them from education after sixth grade, shutting down work opportunities and dissolving protection and reporting mechanisms for gender-based violence.[xi]

Fueled by increased militarization,[1] conflict-related sexual violence against women and girls remains widespread, with survivors’ access to essential services restricted by long-standing barriers such as stigma, fear of retaliation, weak rule of law and economic and political instability exacerbated by the pandemic.[xii] In Ukraine, state authorities, the UN and CSOs have identified numerous cases of conflict-related sexual violence, mostly against women and girls, although they warn that the data does not represent actual figures due to underreporting.[xiii] Accountability continues to be a pending issue in most countries with a long history of conflict-related sexual violence, such as South Sudan, where perpetrators in high offices remain unpunished.[xiv] Victims of SGBV also generally suffer from a lack of survivor-centered holistic approaches that consider their personal religion, ethnicity, migratory status, etc. and pay attention to intersecting inequalities.[xv]

Men and boys as well as LGBTQIA+ people are also targeted with sexual violence in conflict, though social stigma against disclosing these crimes results in a lack of data that perpetuates their invisibility. Sexual violence against men, boys and LGBTQIA+ people weaponizes stereotypes about masculinity and is often used as a form of torture or to establish dominance in detention environments.[xvi] Men, boys and LGBTQIA+ survivors are often unable to access the limited survivor support services available because of this stigma, or because those services exclusively serve women and girls. For instance, men and boys who experienced sexual torture in Sri Lanka during the war have yet to receive the same level of support as female survivors, even though two-thirds of men and boys surveyed by the Freedom From Torture organization in 2015 reported that they had experienced some form of sexual violence while in detention.[xvii] LGBTQIA+ people also experience other forms of gender-targeted violence, such as Ukrainian trans people who were denied permission to enter other countries because they lacked papers reflecting their self-identified true gender identity.[xviii]

Meanwhile, anti-gender narratives targeting sexual and reproductive rights, access to protection and justice for gender-based violence and gender and sexuality education have continued unabated globally.[xix] In Turkey, where men killed at least 300 women in 2020, a March 2021 presidential decree withdrew the country from the Istanbul Convention to combat violence against women and domestic violence on the grounds that it “destroys families” and “normalizes homosexuality.”[xx] Despite large-scale protests and various legal challenges brought by women’s and LGBTQIA+ rights groups, the Council of State upheld the withdrawal in 2022, setting a dangerous precedent worldwide.[xxi] In 2022 in the United States, despite widespread protests, the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, an almost 50-year-old legal precedent that had protected the right to abortion.[xxii]

Despite these challenges, women and LGBTQIA+ people continue to make essential contributions to truth and justice. They are often on the front lines, resisting authoritarian and military governments, discriminatory laws and practices and violence all over the world. In Hungary, civil society successfully mobilized to cast invalid votes in a 2022 referendum[2] seeking to ban LGBTQIA+ representation in education and media, preventing the referendum from reaching the threshold of a binding vote.[xxiii] Women were the driving force behind the mass anti-government protests in Sudan in 2019 and in Iran in 2022, where they resorted to civil disobedience at great risk to their safety, such as unveiling in front of police officers to protest forced hijab rules.[xxiv] Despite reports of torture, killings, arbitrary arrests, threats and intimidation, many Afghan women continue their resistance by protesting and documenting Taliban abuses.[xxv]

In addition to active resistance, women and LGBTQIA+ people uphold truth in other ways. They create art and memorialize victims. Women in particular play a central role in remembering and seeking justice for the disappeared. Different chapters throughout this report show how community-level initiatives led by women and LGBTQIA+ people promote a more inclusive approach to documenting the truth of the past, advocate for changes to better uphold the rights of all people in the future and demonstrate how resistance and solidarity grow stronger through the struggle for equality.