A/HRC/46/36 I. Introduction 1. The Special Rapporteur has identified gender mainstreaming and attention to the gendered effects of counter-terrorism, violent extremism and broadly defined security laws and practice as a fundamental aspect of her work. Specifically, the mandate holder has continued to identify the gender and human rights impacts of measures aimed at countering terrorism1 and those of approaches directed at preventing or countering violent extremism.2 She has also addressed countering terrorism and preventing violent extremism in specific country reports.3 More recently, the mandate holder has attended to: the gendered impacts of restrictions on civic space;4 the risks of women-focused programmes aimed at preventing and countering violent extremism, inclusive of “agenda-hijacking;”5 and the problematic use of gender stereotypes to promote the roles of women in countering terrorism and preventing and countering violent extremism.6 In the present report, she provides a comprehensive overview of the impact on women’s and girls’ rights of the use of counter-terrorism and preventing and countering violent extremism programmes. She specifically addresses the impact of counterterrorism and countering extremism law and practice on the human right to family life, 7 including the construction, regulation and control of the family resulting from those practices. 2. The Special Rapporteur notes that significant and substantive efforts have been made to incorporate a gender perspective into the national security arena. Gender mainstreaming is rooted in the development of international law and architecture for the advancement of gender equality and the empowerment of women. It has expanded to the counter-terrorism regulatory space, particularly within the United Nations counter-terrorism architecture, in part through the Security Council’s women and peace and security agenda.8 That particular progression has been articulated in previous reports from this mandate holder to the Human Rights Council. 9 It is also related to a greater engagement by security actors with the multiplicity of roles that women play in society, such as in the context of conflict and in the structure and practices of terrorist groups, including those designated by the United Nations. The Special Rapporteur has observed that a range of “gendered security harms” have resulted from national security policies, even when Governments have sought to explicitly incorporate a gender perspective.10 Those harms result, for example, when “gender” is treated as synonymous with “women”,11 when human rights and gender equality are removed from gendered approaches to counter-terrorism and preventing and countering violent extremism, when gender equality is instrumentalized through the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women as a national security tactic and when a gender equality perspective is used to focus on women terrorists in ways that encourage punitive State responses, often with a higher gender-related cost for women than for similarly situated men. 3. Drawing from the definition of gender used by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the Special Rapporteur notes and affirms the definition of gender as a set of socially constructed identities, attributes and roles for women and men and society’s social and cultural meaning for those biological differences resulting in hierarchical 1 See A/64/211. See, e.g., A/HRC/31/65, A/HRC/40/52 and A/HRC/43/46. 3 A/HRC/43/46/Add.1. 4 See A/HRC/40/52. 5 A/HRC/43/46, paras. 39–40. 6 A/HRC/31/65, paras. 52–53. 7 The family is recognized as the fundamental group unit of society and as such is entitled to protection and assistance under article 16 (3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 23 (1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and article 10 (1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. 8 See Security Council resolution 1325 (2000). 9 See A/HRC/31/65. 10 Jayne C. Huckerby, “In harm’s way: gender and human rights in national security”, vol. 27, Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy (2020). 11 Fionnuala Ní Aoláin and Jayne Huckerby, “Gendering counterterrorism: how to and how not to (part II)”, Just Security, 3 May 2018; Emily Winterbotham and Elizabeth Pearson, “Different cities, shared stories: a five-country study challenging assumptions around Muslim women and CVE interventions”, The Rusi Journal. 2 2