In October 2024, MADRE and CUNY Law’s Human Rights and Gender Justice Clinic launched a new tool to bolster the efforts of human rights defenders around the world who are working to end gender persecution, the systematic violations of fundamental rights on the basis of gender. 

The Gender Persecution Observatory is a web-based research hub providing real-time information about gender persecution in conflict. The Observatory launches with detailed case data of violence against women, girls, and LGBTQIA+ people of all genders in wars in Afghanistan, Ukraine, Colombia, and Iraq. It also contains detailed conflict analyses on gender persecution in wars spanning more than a dozen countries as far back as World War II. In the future, it will be continually expanded by legal experts and frontline groups. 

The Gender Persecution Observatory launched at a turning point for how the world treats gender-based violence in conflict. The crime of “gender persecution” was codified as a crime against humanity a quarter century ago, but it is only in 2024 that the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued its first verdict in a gender persecution case. 

In 2022, the ICC prosecutor’s office issued a sweeping “Policy on the Crime of Gender Persecution,” and it is now working on developing Principles on the Crime of Gender Persecution to guide governments, human rights bodies, judicial actors, and humanitarian rights groups to help prevent this crime against humanity and respond appropriately when it does occur. 

The launch of the Gender Persecution Observatory marked a pivotal moment in the global effort to combat gender-based violence in conflict zones, providing an essential tool for accountability and justice that has the potential to transform how these crimes are documented, prosecuted, and ultimately prevented.

The Gender Persecution Observatory can be accessed here.