Reem Alsalem

Reem Alsalem (born 1976) is a Jordanian independent consultant and former civil servant. Since August 2021 she has served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls.

Biography
Alsalem was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1976. She was educated at The American University in Cairo where she completed a master's degree in International Relations in 2001. She subsequently graduated from the University of Oxford in 2003 with a Masters in Human Rights Law.

She was employed for 17 years as an international civil servant by the UNHCR where she worked with refugees in 13 countries. She left in 2016 to work as an independent consultant on humanitarian and gender issues. She speaks Arabic, English, French, German and Spanish.

Alsalem was appointed United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls and took up the role in August 2021.

Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls
Core to her work as special rapporteur are her claims that sex and gender should not be conflated, and that both should be recorded in data. She considers that in some situations there may be a clash between women's rights and transgender rights.

She opposed the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill and claimed it could "open the door for violent males." Her views were disputed by the United Nations Independent Expert on sexual orientation and gender identity, Victor Madrigal-Borloz, and the spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights who said that "everyone (...) should have access to legal recognition of their gender identity based on self-identification." Six feminist organizations in Scotland—Engender, JustRight Scotland, Scottish Women's Rights Centre, Scottish Women's Aid, Amnesty International Scotland and Rape Crisis Scotland—also expressed disappointment by Alsaleem's comments, accusing her of failing to speak with Scottish human rights or feminist organisations before her statements. In 2023 Alsalem attended the gender-critical FiLiA conference, amid protests against the conference.

According to the New Statesman, "her insistence on recognising the difference between sex and gender has landed her in trouble." In 2023 an open letter published by the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID), endorsed by several hundred NGOs and women's groups, accused her of being "anti-trans", which she denies. An open letter published by Sex Matters supported her position. Alsalem asks why is it "problematic" for people to say: "This is important; many of our needs emanate from being female, or male, and there are certain instances where it’s proportionate, legitimate and perfectly necessary to keep a space single sex". Legal scholar Jens Theilen said that Alsalem "is using women's rights as a tool to undermine trans rights" and considered her actions "a stark example of individual politics furthering rather than contesting oppression," citing the AWID letter.

Alsalem was criticised in 2023 by Claire Waxman, London's Victims' Commissioner, as she did not speak out on reports of sexual and gender-based violence in the 7 October attack on Israel against Israeli women during and following the Hamas-led attack. In response, Alsalem said she had condemned "what happened on 7 October", had contacted NGOs in Israel without reply, and said she could not make "sweeping statements" without receiving evidence.

In 2024, Alsalem said that "grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian law" had been committed in Gaza by Israeli troops. In a formal statement, she described "credible" allegations of "multiple forms of sexual assault", such as rape and strip-searches, against Palestinian women and girls. When asked to provide the source for her allegations, Alsalem cited unsubstantiated reports by Richard A. Falk. Israel denied the allegations.

In January 2024, Alsalem criticised the composition of a World Health Organization (WHO) committee, saying that most committee members had "strong, one-sided views in favour of promoting hormonal gender transition and legal recognition of self-asserted gender" and that none of them was an expert in adolescent development. Author Helen Joyce supported Alsalem, emphasising from her letter "the short time-frame given for comments, the unbalanced group developing the guidelines and the uncritical endorsement of gender self-ID".

In February 2024, Alsalem criticised the UK's strategies for combatting violence against women and girls. She said: "Entrenched patriarchy at almost every level of society, combined with a rise in misogyny that permeates the physical and online world, is denying thousands of women and girls across the UK the right to live in safety, free from fear and violence".

She was one of the many UN experts who spoke out against the sale of arms to Israel in June 2024 as a result of the conflict in Gaza. The experts cautioned arms suppliers and finance companies that they may be implicated in human rights violations. The signatories to the warning included special reporteurs Paula Gaviria Betancur, Tlaleng Mofokeng, Mary Lawlor, Margaret Satterthwaite and Francesca Albanese.