Dear Friend,

My name is Christine Ryan, and I am the Legal Director of the Global Justice Center. I’m reaching out to you to share an important update! 

Earlier this month, GJC’s Legal Adviser Elena Sarver and I traveled to Geneva to attend the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination’s (CERD) review of the United States. This was the first time since 2014 that the United States has been reviewed by the Committee. And since it has only been a few months since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, we knew this was a pivotal moment in our strategy to rebuild and expand reproductive rights in the United States.

Prior to the session, we submitted a joint report and released a factsheet with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative for Economic & Social Justice detailing the racially unjust impacts of abortion law and policy in the United States. While at the UN, we presented our arguments to the Committee, collaborated with civil society organizations, and met with a variety of agencies to emphasize the impacts that US abortion restrictions and disparities in reproductive healthcare have on racial inequality and violate the right to health of Black, Brown and Indigenous women and people who can become pregnant. Elena and I also made it clear that US foreign policy on abortion, especially the Helms Amendment, threatens the health and lives of Black, Brown and Indigenous people in the Global South. 

By the end of the month, the Committee will release its ‘concluding observations’ on US compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination and make recommendations to the State based on the information GJC and other stakeholders presented and submitted. This kind of legal advocacy is vital for ensuring that the United States is held accountable under international human rights law for its discriminatory and dangerous restrictions on reproductive rights. 

We are confident that our efforts have influenced the Committee and will put international pressure on US lawmakers to take action in favor of reproductive freedom, racial justice, and gender equality. 

This will also mark the first time that the Committee recognizes the impact of abortion restrictions on communities of color - a precedent that can be used in the future by human rights advocates across the globe.

This is just the beginning of our post Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision legal advocacy efforts, and we need your support to sustain and bolster our fight for gender equality and reproductive rights in the United States and globally. For more updates on our work, you can follow me on Twitter @christinegjc.

I hope you’ll join the Gender Justice Champions community to grow GJC’s pressing legal advocacy work and be part of this movement for equality.


In solidarity,

Dr. Christine Ryan
Legal Director
Global Justice Center