Side event to the 23rd Session of the International Criminal Court Assembly of State Parties.
Facilitated by Legal Action Worldwide. Sponsored by the Embassy of Australia in The Hague.
On 5 December 2024, coinciding with the Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Gender Justice Practitioner (GJP) Hub was formally launched at the Australian Ambassador’s Residence in The Hague (Tobias Asserlaan 6, The Hague, The Netherlands. The event was organised by Legal Action Worldwide and the Embassy of Australia to the Netherlands, with the generous support of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).
The Gender Justice Practitioner Hub (The GJP Hub) is founded to foster collaboration, strengthen coordination and facilitate experience-sharing amongst practitioners all over the world to ensure better gender justice outcomes for survivors of core international crimes.
At the launch event, the findings from two years of research and consultation about the GJP Hub idea and the next steps for the its establishment will be presented. An esteemed panel of practitioners will outline the critical impact that the GJP Hub will have on their work securing gender justice. Participants will find out more about the work of the GJP Hub and about how they can get more involved.
The GJP Hub
In recent decades, the many obstacles to securing meaningful gender justice in accountability processes for core international crimes (particularly war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide) have become increasingly apparent. The discriminatory gender hierarchy operates to prevent equal and effective access to justice for certain groups and individuals who are disadvantaged due to constructed gender norms. While the issue of conflict-related sexual violence has become more visible, and various initiatives have been undertaken to address it, effective justice is still rarely achieved for sexual violence victims. The many other aspects of gender justice beyond sexual violence crimes, and the specific barriers to achieving them, remain under-recognised and seldom addressed in accountability processes.
All too often, attempts to secure accountability for gendered crimes are fettered by justice systems ill-equipped to meaningfully address these crimes. With each new accountability process undertaken, there is a risk of the same mistakes and omissions being repeated.
These difficulties are not insurmountable. There are a number of landmark legal developments and successes from national, regional and international courts around the world that demonstrate that more effective gender justice can be achieved. Experts with decades of relevant experience exist across multiple contexts. It is critical that these experiences are now leveraged. The conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, and Myanmar, among others, are recent examples in a long series of situations underscoring the urgent need for more effective and coordinated approaches to channelling comprehensive gender expertise into accountability processes from the outset.
The establishment of the GJP Hub is a practical step towards addressing these challenges and will help to promote more gender-just accountability processes in the future.
Over the past 24 months Legal Action Worldwide, with the support of DFAT, has undertaken extensive research and consultation, engaging with more than 820 individuals across 9 roundtables, workshops and conferences to assess the level of demand for the GJP Hub and to clarify the focus and scope of its mandate. The overarching message was clear: there was huge enthusiasm for the establishment of the GJP Hub to carry out three essential roles:
- To act as a collective, accessible repository for gender justice precedents, tools and information for practitioners.
- To provide opportunities and fora for practitioners to come together to think creatively about gender justice, to network, to identify common problems and innovative solutions.
- To act as a helpdesk, providing justice practitioners with tailored solutions to specific challenges in securing high-quality gender justice outcomes, from technical assistance, to connection, mentorship and support by leveraging existing expertise.
The GJP Hub will champion core values including an intersectional, feminist, decolonial approach to gender and recognise that gender justice and peace are closely interlinked.