UN Rapporteur's Letter on Mexico Feminicide Bill Splits International Lawyers

A UN human rights official is pushing Mexico to define "woman" by biological sex in its draft feminicide law, and a group of international lawyers says that position contradicts twenty years of jurisprudence from the Inter-American Court, UN treaty bodies and the International Criminal Court.

On 30 September, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, wrote to the Mexican government about the draft General Law to Prevent, Investigate, Punish and Repair the Crime of Feminicide. The bill, backed by President Claudia Sheinbaum, would standardize the definition of feminicide, as well as investigations and punishments, across Mexico's states.

The flashpoint is one clause. The bill defines "woman" as "any person, regardless of age, who is a female or self-identifies as a woman."

Alsalem objects. She insists the term be defined with reference to "sex" and argues the current wording "prevents clear identification of the persons protected and therefore prevents clear identification of the forms of violence of which they are victims."

Two human rights lawyers, Juliana Laguna Trujillo of Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice and Akila Radhakrishnan, an advisor to the End Gender Apartheid Campaign, have published a detailed rebuttal. They argue Alsalem's reading misstates international human rights standards and the principle of non-retrogression. The takeaway: the letter, if followed, would narrow a draft law that currently matches Mexico's treaty obligations.

Why the case of Paola Buenrostro sits at the centre

On 31 August 2026, ten years after trans sex worker Paola Buenrostro was killed in Mexico City, police arrested the man accused of her murder. Her case helped drive recognition of the crime of transfeminicide in the Criminal Code of Mexico City in 2024.

Under the bill as drafted, her killing counts as feminicide. Under Alsalem's proposed sex-based definition, it does not. The authors argue that exclusion would mark a rollback for a region where legislation on femicide and feminicide has, for two decades, covered trans women and others who identify as women.

What does the Inter-American case law say?

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has repeatedly rejected a purely biological reading. In Atala Riffo and daughters v. Chile (2012) and Advisory Opinion OC-24/17 (2017), it held that sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression are protected categories under the American Convention.

In Vicky Hernández et al. v. Honduras (2021), concerning a trans woman killed during the 2009 coup, the Court found the Belém do Pará Convention "refers to violence against women based on their gender" and that "violence against persons based on gender identity or expression, and especially trans women, is also based on gender." Article 9 of that convention, the Court added, requires states to account for intersectional vulnerabilities, including sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Court reaffirmed this in Leonela Zelaya et al. v. Honduras (2025). It held Honduras responsible for repeated arbitrary detentions of Leonela Zelaya, a trans woman, sex worker and HIV-positive person, and for disregarding her gender identity when investigating her death.

For Mexico, these standards bind directly through conventionality control, including judgments against other states. The authors' practical point for practitioners: the bill's inclusive definition implements existing Inter-American obligations rather than extending them.

How do UN treaty bodies read "sex" and "gender"?

Alsalem anchors her argument in CEDAW. The CEDAW Committee reads the treaty more broadly. In General Recommendation 28 (2010) it stated that while CEDAW "only refers to sex-based discrimination," read together its provisions show "the Convention covers gender-based discrimination against women." General Recommendation 35 (2017) cites "being lesbian, bisexual, transgender or intersex" among intersectional factors shaping discrimination.

A joint statement from 47 UN Special Procedures, issued without Alsalem's participation, said frameworks that "impose rigid divisions between sex and gender, are limited in their ability to meaningfully address structural inequality or ensure the full realization of women's and girls' universal human rights."

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, in General Comment No. 20, held that "sex" has evolved to cover "not only physiological characteristics but also the social construction of gender stereotypes, prejudices and expected roles."

What does the ICC's gender persecution jurisprudence add?

International criminal law points the same way. The ICC Office of the Prosecutor's policies on gender-based crimes read the Rome Statute's phrase "within the context of society" as covering sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, and recognize intersex, non-binary and transgender persons among groups that may be targeted.

Judges have endorsed this. On 8 July 2025, Pre-Trial Chamber II issued arrest warrants, unsealed on 5 October 2026, for Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani for persecution on gender grounds against girls, women and others who did not conform to Taliban views on gender. The Chamber held the Statute's definition of gender must be interpreted beyond a purely biological conception of sex.

Pre-Trial Chamber I confirmed gender persecution charges in the El Hishri case, finding "actual and perceived LGBTQI+ persons were targeted for arrest and detention because they did not conform to the Mitiga Perpetrators' views and expectations on gender."

What happens next in Congress?

The Feminicide Bill now sits before the Mexican Congress. The authors urge a legislative process grounded in Mexico's international obligations. Their warning is blunt: a definition of woman grounded solely in biological sex would breach obligations on eliminating gender-based discrimination and violence. Paola Buenrostro's family waited nearly a decade for recognition; the authors say a national law should ensure no one else does.