More than 140,000 people have signed a petition urging U.S. diplomats to oppose changes to how “gender” is addressed in a proposed U.N. Convention on Crimes Against Humanity.
Pro-life advocacy group CitizenGO launched the petition last week, calling on Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz and other U.S. delegates to preserve what it describes as legal clarity in the treaty negotiations. CitizenGO’s website showed more than 148,000 signatures as of this week.
The petition asks U.S. diplomats to “defend legal certainty in this text; specifically, to restore the definition of 'gender' that States have already agreed to, and to oppose the introduction of terms that lack strict guidelines to safeguard pro-life and pro-family citizens.”
According to the petition, “In 1998, the Rome Statute settled this question. Article 7(3) states that 'the term 'gender' refers to the two sexes, male and female, within the context of society.' Article 7(1)(h) criminalizes persecution on gender grounds and refers back to that definition explicitly. This is not contested language — it is binding treaty law, ratified by the U.S. and by 120 other States.”
It signed the treaty in 2000 but never ratified it, and in 2002 the George W. Bush administration formally withdrew the U.S. signature altogether.
“The draft articles for this Convention removed that definition,” the petition noted. The International Law Commission’s 2019 draft did not retain the Rome Statute’s definition of “gender,” citing developments in international human rights and criminal law and an evolving understanding of the term.
“A similar approach of viewing gender as a socially constructed (rather than biological) concept has been taken by various other international authorities and in the jurisprudence of international criminal courts and tribunals,” the draft articles state.
CitizenGO also objects to proposed concepts including “gender apartheid” and “sexual or reproductive violence,” arguing that such terminology lacks sufficiently clear definitions.
“A convention reserved for genocide, extermination, enslavement, and torture would carry terms whose meaning no State has agreed on, and whose interpretation would fall to whoever litigates first,” the petition warned. “The practical consequence is foreseeable. Laws protecting unborn children, and positions on family and on the biological reality of male and female, have long been matters of democratic debate, debated in parliaments, decided by voters. Under an undefined framework, they could be reinterpreted as violations of international criminal law.”
The petition maintains that “Crimes against humanity must remain clearly defined and reserved for atrocities that are universally recognized as such” and urges U.S. diplomats to “Support restoring the Rome Statute's Article 7(3) definition of 'gender' in the Convention text, as already agreed language” and “oppose the inclusion of undefined terms such as 'gender apartheid' and 'sexual or reproductive violence.'”
It also calls on U.S. officials to “ensure this Convention cannot be used to criminalize legitimate pro-life and pro-family beliefs, speech, or public policy.”
