Thread by @PreetKGillMP

Human rights cannot be applied selectively. The UK has binding obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) to uphold women’s sex-based rights and ensure their safety, privacy, and dignity. 🧵

https://twitter.com/steven_swinford/status/1978022522407764145

Yet this cornerstone of international law is entirely absent from the Commissioner’s analysis.

The letter warns against zero-sum debates, but in doing so it pretends conflicts do not exist. In practice, sex and gender identity can come into tension in spaces such as prisons

refuges, healthcare, and sport. Recognising that reality is not divisive it’s responsible policymaking.

Women’s refuges, for example, exist because survivors of male violence need spaces that are genuinely single-sex.

The Equality Act 2010 allows for such protections precisely because Parliament recognised that sometimes, safeguarding women requires clear sex based boundaries.

The Commissioner’s letter overlooks this entirely.

The UK Supreme Court recently confirmed that sex in the Equality Act means biological sex, not gender identity. This decision brings legal clarity and ensures that both sex based and gender identity protections can coexist.

Across the UK, women and girls depend on policies that respect their biological reality for safety in prisons, fairness in sport, and privacy in changing rooms and hospitals. These are not abstract debates! they concern real women’s lives.

A truly rights based approach must defend all protected groups, including women, not treat their rights as negotiable.

Protecting the rights of one group should never mean erasing the rights of another!