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Human Rights Watch
Feminist Foreign Policy During a Global Backlash
When governments convene this week in Paris for a conference on feminist foreign policy, there will be a lot to talk about. The French government’s description of the event laments that progress toward gender equality “is not being made fast enough.” That is an epic understatement.
We are deep in a global backlash against women and girls’ rights. Reproductive rights are under attackaround the world. At the United Nations and other international bodies, anti-feminist governments, increasingly led by the United States, are working to undermine women’s rights, and space to be heard is closing. In Afghanistan, Taliban oppression is driving demands to create an international crime of gender apartheid. We see discussions about whether women should be allowed to vote.
Misogyny is a favorite tool of authoritarians. Too many actors are ceding the field to them. The United States and European countries, including France, have slashed aid, harming the work of many women’s rights groups in countries around the world
Feminist foreign policy was a term coined in Sweden in 2014. Although Sweden later stepped back, by 2024, a dozen more countries from Europe, Latin America, and North Africa had pledged to implement a feminist foreign policy. France published its strategy in March.
The countries that come together in Paris should play a lead role in blocking the erosion of women’s rights, taking an intersectional approach centering the voices of marginalized women, including those with disabilities and on the frontlines of the climate crisis. They should recognize that language is worth fighting for, in UN Security Council resolutions and elsewhere. “Workarounds,” such as avoiding the use of “gender” in resolutions, undermine gains.
But as France also pointed out, at the current pace, the UN predicts we will achieve gender equality in 300 years. Countries implementing a feminist foreign policy should both fight against backsliding and continue insisting on progress.
They should push for all countries to fund protection against sexual and gender-based violence and ensure access to health, education, and housing.
They should insist on women’s rights defenders being heard in Security Council debates, channel support to female peacekeepers, and push for women’s equal participation in peace negotiations, treaty drafting, and other international forums. They should move forward with a planned International Court of Justice case on violations of the women’s rights convention and create an international crime of gender apartheid through a UN crimes against humanity treaty.
We hope the Paris meeting will produce a sense of urgency, unity, determination, and willingness to fight.
EU Launches New LGBTIQ+ Strategy
This month, the European Commission released its LGBTIQ+ Equality Strategy 2026–2030, a renewed and ambitious step in the European Union’s commitment to equality, inclusion, and human rights. Building on the 2020–2025 framework, it reaffirms the goal of making “a Union of Equality” a lived reality, while confronting the surge in anti-LGBTIQ rhetoric and violence across Europe and beyond.
The strategy aims to strengthen the EU’s legal and policy framework against discrimination, calling for the full implementation of the Equal Treatment Directive and stronger safeguards against hate speech, hate crimes, and “conversion practices.” It also reinforces commitments to inclusive education, equitable health care, and recognition of diverse families across member states.
By embedding LGBTIQ+ equality in EU external action, the strategy positions the EU as a global defender of LGBTIQ+ rights. Through the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument and the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values programme, the EU pledges continued funding for human rights defenders and civil society worldwide, making equality a pillar of EU development and foreign policy. These commitments are crucial as the EU negotiates its next seven-year budget, especially at a time when cuts to foreign aid are hurting LGBTIQ+ organizations worldwide.
The strategy comes at another critical juncture: Within the EU, crackdowns on LGBTIQ+ rights in countries including Hungary,Slovakia, and Bulgaria highlight the EU’s mixed record and the need for more concerted action by the commission to hold member states accountable. These trends mirror a global backlash marked by the spread of anti-LGBTIQ+ and anti-gender narratives, the criminalization of same-sex relations, and the targeting of transgender people. The new EU strategy seeks to anchor LGBTIQ+ equality as essential to democratic resilience, linking internal coherence with external credibility.
Nonetheless, challenges persist. Implementation will depend heavily on member states’ political will, and enforcement mechanisms remain limited. Moreover, while external funding is vital, ensuring that it reaches grassroots actors in repressive contexts will require greater flexibility and direct-access mechanisms.
Overall, the LGBTIQ+ Equality Strategy 2026–2030 is a reaffirmation of the EU’s aspiration to be a global human rights leader. It sends a clear message: protecting LGBTIQ+ rights is central to democracy, social justice, and the EU’s identity at home and abroad. The EU and its member states should honor the ambitions articulated in the strategy in political and financial decisions both domestically and internationally.
Iran: Three Prisoners Dead after Denied Medical Care
(Beirut) – Three women died in Qarchak prison, a Tehran women’s prison notorious for abysmal conditions, between September 16 and 25, 2025, following a lack of medical care, Human Rights Watch said today.
The deaths in custody of Soudabeh Asadi, Jamile Azizi, and 42-year-old political prisoner Somayeh Rashidi highlight Iranian authorities’ violation of prisoners’ right to life by causing or contributing to their deaths through denial of medical care. These cases point to the Iranian authorities’ long-standing policy of denying prisoners’ medical care and are a subset of the brutal treatment that puts Iranian prisoners’ lives at risk.
“Prisons in Iran, especially Qarchak, have become places of torment and death where prisoners’ dignity and basic rights are systematically ignored,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “For decades, the authorities have not only failed to improve conditions but have deliberately used the denial of even the most basic rights, such as access to medical care, as a tool of repression and punishment against prisoners.”
The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Mandela Rules) requires that states provide prisoners access to adequate medical care.
Shahr-e Rey prison, known as Qarchak, is notorious for its inhumane conditions including poor hygiene, severe overcrowding, and inadequate access to basic facilities and medical care. Circumstances are so dire that many prisoners have gone on hunger strikes in protest. Qarchak has become a stark symbol of the Iranian government’s continued violation of prisoners’ human rights.
For years, human rights organizations, activists, and UN experts and bodies have raised concerns about the prison’s conditions and authorities’ denial of medical care. In August 2025, Human Rights Watch again raised alarms about the dire situation of women political prisoners, including ailing detainees who had been transferred to Qarchak’s quarantine section after the June 23 Israeli attack on Evin prison.
Among those transferred in June was Rashidi, who was arrested in April 2025 for writing protest slogans in Tehran, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRANA), a US-based human rights group. Rashidi died in a hospital on September 25, ten days after she was taken to Mofatteh Hospital in Varamin following a seizure in prison, HRANA reported. On September 25, the judiciary’s official news agency, Mizan, confirmed the death of a prisoner identified as “S.R.”
Doctors identified Rashidi’s delayed hospitalization as the primary cause of her irreversible decline, an informed source told HRANA. While she was in prison, Rashidi was sometimes unable to walk or care for herself due to her health problems, according to HRANA. Despite the fact that judicial and prison authorities and medical staff were all aware of Rashidi’s condition, authorities denied her timely and adequate medical care, providing her with sedatives and psychiatric drugs that worsened her symptoms, according to HRANA. Prison administrators even accused Rashidi of faking illness when she became so sick that other prisoners had to carry her to the clinic on September 15, sources told Human Rights Watch.
Consistent with authorities’ long-standing patterns of denial, distortion, and evading responsibility, within several days after Rashidi’s death, the judiciary claimed that she had a history of drug use and neurological disorders and received appropriate treatment in prison.
Rashidi’s death in custody came in the wake of two other women prisoners’ deaths. According to HRANA, Asadi, who was held in Qarchak on financial charges, died on September 16 after authorities denied her medical care and delayed her transfer to a hospital. On September 19, Azizi, who was detained on charges unknown to Human Rights Watch, was taken to the prison clinic with heart attack symptoms. After examining her, doctors told her there was nothing wrong and that she should return to the prison ward where she died shortly thereafter, a source told HRANA.
A woman human rights defender who was formerly held in Qarchak told Human Rights Watch that prison clinic officials sent her back to the prison ward without running any tests despite excruciating chest pain and intentionally delayed her transfer to an external hospital even though her condition was worsening. “They [authorities] expose us all [prisoners] to death,” she said.
The three women’s deaths are the latest in a long-standing documented policy of authorities denying prisoners access to healthcare, sometimes to punish and silence dissent. In an April 2022 report, Amnesty International detailed the circumstances surrounding the deaths in custody of dozens of men and women in 30 prisons across the country since 2010 as a result of denial of medical care. Many cases of denial of medical care and deaths in custody—in particular, prisoners detained for ordinary offenses and those from marginalized communities—goes unreported. Well-founded fears of reprisals by the authorities also severely hinder many families’ attempts to advocate for their loved ones.
On October 9, authorities transferred women political prisoners from Qarchak prison to Ward Six of Evin prison. Activists and human rights organizations have reported that they are held in poor conditions without access to basic necessities. The situation of prisoners returned to Evin prison is concerning given that Israel’s June 23 airstrikes resulted in extensive damage to vital facilities there, including the clinic and visitation hall.
Authorities continue to deny political prisoners in both Qarchak and Evin prisons access to adequate medical care. Sources told Human Rights Watch that Maryam Akbari Monfared, 48, has not been taken to an external facility to receive necessary back and spinal surgery and specialized treatment, without which she is at risk of paralysis. Despite transferring women political prisoners to Evin prison, authorities have continued to hold Akbari Monfared in Qarchak prison in an apparent attempt to punish her. Akbari Monfared has been imprisoned for 15 years on the vaguely worded charge of “enmity against God” (moharebeh) without a single day of leave.
Warisha Moradi, a Kurdish activist on death row in Evin prison, also requires urgent medical care for several medical conditions, a source told Human Rights Watch.
Scores of other ailing prisoners, including women political prisoners such as Zeynab Jalalian, a Kurdish activist, remain deprived of medical care in prisons across the country.
Under international law, states have an obligation to carry out independent, impartial, transparent, effective, and thorough investigations into potentially unlawful deaths, including those occurring in custody. Consistent with historical patterns of impunity, Iran’s authorities have systematically failed to conduct such investigations into cases of deaths in custody, including those of prisoners. In many cases, they have simply denied allegations of intentionally depriving prisoners adequate medical care, sometimes within hours after the death, or blamed them on “suicides” or substance abuse.
Iran’s authorities must immediately provide timely and adequate medical care, including specialized treatment outside of prisons, to all prisoners, Human Rights Watch said.
“The international community should apply unwavering pressure on Iran’s authorities so they address the dire conditions prisoners endure throughout the country, including in Qarchak, and ensure proper medical care for all detainees,” Page said.