 I want to say goodbye and welcome to the 30th meeting of 2021 session 6 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. We have no apologies for the meeting this evening. We are joined today by Emirodic MSPs and we are also expected to be joined soon by MSPs, Ash Regan, Tess White and you are all very welcome. The only item on our agenda today is to hear from the Unique Nations Experts We will hear hers first from Victor Madrigal Varlaws, United Nations independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity and then from揮m a salaam United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls.erschwm ddiwyll Genery入 Newsh姵�, ac Store will bwer mea cymhwyl, ITTiG deddfol Gwneud yn gweithu'r byw does erوتodur a phrygedddio'r pethau hynny. 2021, istanaed y gyfaint sawl o ddefnyddannno eich gwroedd y methu, ar gael y ddiwrnodau ar gyfer y cymhwyloedd cymhwyl ar gyfer hyn o'r sefyllfa, ac i'r ddiwrnodau ar gyfer pethau gyrdd, ac i'r ffawr i'r cymhwyloedd ymddangos o'r styl o'r cymhwyloedd ysgol, ac i'r ddiwrnodau ar gyfer y cymhwyloedd ymddangos. Felly, y ddiwrnodau ar gael y cymhwyloedd, rydw i'n gweithio ar gael ei wneud yn y ddweud o'r ddiwrnodau ar gyfer cyfwyl yn cerddio. On 12 December 2022, I restated that advice. By means of introduction, what I would like to do is to present the reasons for that restatement, my understanding of its placement in the procedure and its scope. As to the reasons that motivated my restatement, Mr Convener, as I monitored the public and parliamentary debate in relation to the bill, I have become increasingly concerned about the misrepresentation of the United Nations' long-standing position in relation to legal recognition of gender identity based on self-identification. I am also concerned about narratives that appear to be utilising the discussion around the bill as a proxy for reigniting exclusionary discussions on the very existence and rights of trans people. As I noted in my report on narratives of exclusion presented to the United Nations General Assembly in October of 2021, these narratives often use stigma against trans men and trans women and generally through a trio of rhetorical levers, the rights of non-trans women and girls, the rights of children and the issue of sport. I have also grown concerned about the toxicity of this debate and its impact on the safety and security of all, but very particularly trans persons, as these are the very myths that drive much of the violence and harassment that is inflicted upon them. In the most recent survey of the European Fundamental Rights Agency, 50 per cent of trans persons in the UK reported harassment based on their gender identity in the past 12 months, rising to 66 per cent for trans women, which is significantly higher than all LGBT populations combined. 36 per cent of trans women in the UK reported physical or sexual attacks in the past five years, this is more than triple the rate for women as a population. As to the procedure followed for my advice in this matter, I understand that my presentation last June was rendered in the correct procedural stage. My restatement and further granularity are descriptive of sources that were available at that moment and all of which I actually referred to at that moment. There is one sort of exception, which is of course the report by the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, which was available to the Government, I believe, a month before its publication a couple of weeks ago. I have very highly valued the constant interaction of the UK to the three reports that constitute the core of my advice. For example, the statement carried out in 25 June 2021 by the UK in a comment of one of my reports on gender identity made reference to increasingly toxic and polarising global debate, particularly on social media, about the concept and process of changing gender. It actually quite unequivocally stated that one should not discriminate or be discriminated against because of gender identity when that gender identity is different from that assigned at birth. Finally, Mr Convener, as to the scope of my advice, my objective has always been to communicate to the Scottish Parliament the acknowledgement of gender and their in gender identity and gender expression within international human rights law and to actually present what I consider on the basis of evidence to be a long-standing position of the United Nations human rights machinery in relation to gender identity and its connection to the standard of self-identification. I have also described the evidence that has led me to the conclusion that there is United Nations consensus on legal recognition of gender identity as inextricably linked with compliance of the fundamental principle of equal protection and recognition before the law, which is a cornerstone of so many of the human rights instruments in the global stage and also in regional law. Finally, I have presented my legal analysis as to why the conflation of legal recognition of gender identity with safeguards of safe spaces, that conflation is not supported by the evidence or by human rights-based analysis under which non-discrimination is a fundamental element and a cornerstone. I am in this context and in the context delineated by that motivation, that procedural understanding and that scope, I am of course very honoured to be having this conversation with you today and I will be very pleased to share whatever elements of evidence I have available to me in that context. Thank you very much. We will now move to questions starting with Maggie Chapman, please. Thank you very much, Joe. Good evening, Victor. Thank you for joining us this evening. I want to ask a couple of questions. You mentioned in your opening remarks the Council of Europe's commission of all human rights, Dynia Miatovic, the report that she released, and in that she talks quite clearly about the stigmatising discourse that both Government officials and certain parliamentarians have contributed to that actually contributes to the culture wars that we are seeing around trans rights and the distortion of human rights that have pitted trans rights against women's rights and the distortion of human rights as a zero-sum gain. Could you comment on that and give us a little bit more of an explanation as to why you have come to the view that you have? Thank you very much. I think that there are several angles for that analysis and of course they all find a point of departure in the reality that there doesn't appear to be any socially or politically redeemable reason to actually discriminate against trans people or gender diverse people in general under a human rights-based analysis. Of course, this entails the reality that we are operating under certain structures that historically have existed, that are binary in nature and that create realities upon which we actually define the language of rights, but also the language of injustice. I think that this is a rich angle for analysis of both what the commissioner and myself and many other parts of the human rights machinery have arrived to and it's that given that there are no socially or politically redeemable reasons to carry out this discrimination against the whole population and it doesn't resist the analysis of non-discrimination, then the question becomes what are the reasons why populations and communities are seeing themselves stigmatized and how prejudice actually works against them? I think that the basis of the conclusions by the commissioner is this understanding that there is a weaponization, an instrumentalization of the very existence of in this case trans and gender diverse persons to some purposes that in some case could be described as galvanizing political basis or using these discourses as proxies for other dialogues and this is where I see a very strong connection with my findings in the reports on narratives of exclusion in which I actually created an inventory not only of those that triad of elements which you know in succession is always the rights of non-trans women and girls, the rights of children and the issue of sport as actually being quite powerful and quite appealing because of course they evoke real problematics but they are actually just making what in my view is an artificial connection with those problems and the existence of trans persons and I found very revealing the findings of the commissioner when she speaks about this idea of the leap and I'm quoting now from her report the liberate attempts by some politicians to turn the situations of trans people into culture wars or wedge issues for electoral purposes and how the commissioner how she is concerned that this has led to a loss of trust by significant parts of the LGBTI community in the government as protectors of their rights. So to me it all connects with this instrumentalization if you will this weaponization of the very existence of trans persons and again what is very important to me to underline is I have found it extremely troublesome that in the context of the discussion of the gender recognition reform bill which is exclusively meant to simplify a procedure that already exists and introduces no new rights in relation to the legal recognition of gender identity and yet the popular and political discussion appears to be very much geared at questioning the very existence of trans persons and describing them under such horrifyingly stigmatizing language as men dressed as women and so on and so forth. Thank you victim that that's really helpful I could come back on a couple of things but I know the convener is keen to allow everybody to speak so I'll leave it there for now thank you. Okay thanks very much Maggie I'm keen that we get around everyone we might have time to come back to this. If I can now go to Rachel Hamilton please. Thank you and thank you Victor for coming to the committee this evening to give evidence. I wanted to speak to you about the intervention from your counterpart, Ewing, a special rapporteur for violence against women and girls, Rina Salam, who said that her safeguarding fears were based on empirical evidence that the majority of sex offenders are male and that persistent sex offenders will go to great lengths to gain access to those they wish to abuse and she's right isn't she? We're all aware of countless examples of the lengths that repeat sex offenders do go to to access potential victims. Can you firstly tell me why you think that the gender recognition reform as it is will not be similarly abused by violent sex offenders if vital safeguards are removed and if you say that this is a possibility do you agree that a safeguard to prevent convicted sex offenders applying for a GRC is a reasonable and necessary measure? Well thank you very much for that question I hope you would allow me to shed light on a couple of things but I do want to make sure that I delimit my answer within in one aspect. You've made reference to the submission by my colleague special rapporteur Al Salam nothing in my opinion actually is meant to be seen as a commentary or as a discussion on her paper. We are both equally mandated by the Human Rights Council to carry out our work. We have the ambits of our competence well delineated by the resolutions that fundament our mandates and it's very important for me that it's clearly understood that the only person able to comment on her position from the standpoint of special procedures of the UN is special rapporteur Al Salam. This is of course not only a question of collegiality but it's also a question of recognition of the way in which our mandates are created. So if you will allow me I'm going to actually try and slightly place how I understand your question to be in a more general context of my opinion and that is I actually I am convinced that women are of course right to fear violence at the hands of predators and predatory men in particular that is absolutely a certainty on my part. They are massively affected by it and although I actually know special rapporteur Al Salam to be the person in charge of actually analysing the whole scope of violence against women, I am concerned at this angle from the point of view of lesbian women, bisexual women and of course trans women in general and I think one of the ideas that I find actually quite problematic in relation to these connections is how the narrative that I was describing that is advocated by certain exclusionary narratives is that there is this connection made with the idea that trans women are actually men in dresses and there be predatory men in dresses and there is something that is quite off about that and that I think creates significant possibilities for stigma and discrimination. Trans women are not men in dresses, they're certainly not predatory men in dresses, they're not men at all and although of course I don't think that trans communities and populations need to provide evidence of lack of abuse in the systems that have legal gender recognition based on self-identification, I think that it is telling that in none of those countries there are administrative or judicial findings of predatory men abusing the system to obtain access to places where they as men, as they are, would not be entitled to gain access to. To me, I think that there's a great importance to acknowledging that the legal recognition standards that exist under those legal recognition standards, of course including in Scotland, I don't think that this legislation is actually making a change in this aspect, they already exist. A trans woman is a woman with all of the rights that a woman has. Now in my opinion, which of course is the one that I am very much hoping to shed clarity on, I actually explained that in my view there is no evidence and no legal analysis that concludes that maintaining complexity in the process of recognition of gender identity would be an effective safeguard for women in all of their diversity and that includes lesbian women and it includes trans women and it includes bisexual women and of course all other women in all of their diversity. There is no evidence linking to the point that complexity in the procedure of legal recognition is an effective safeguard for women in all of their diversity or to the goal that we all share or let's say a very significant proportion of a share in ensuring freedom of all women from violence and discrimination. Okay, can I pick you up on the point that you made? Obviously we want to ensure that there is a balance that women's rights and safety and privacy are protected which was not addressed in your submission to the committee but I just wanted to ask you about the countries that currently have legal recognition on gender-based self-identification. Are there concrete examples that show that there have reduced the number of acts of violence against trans people? I am recognising that you are discussing here. Did you understand the question? Let me try and tell you what I understood as your question and hopefully I have not misunderstood. I think that there is significant evidence coming through in surveys including the number of policy bodies that have been put in place in countries that not only have legal recognition based on self-id but that have legal recognition of gender identity as a policy and have adopted through administrative means or through legal means. That is one thing and of course legal recognition of gender identity is recognised in all of those countries and by evidence as one of the essential steps to ensure that violence and discrimination against trans persons that includes trans men, trans women, it also includes in many contexts non-binary and gender diverse persons legal recognition of their existence and creating a link under that existence with all of the range of state services of which they have been traditionally excluded and of course as you may already have seen in some of the evidence that have been presented that includes access to health centres, it includes access to employment, it includes access to better education and so on and so forth so it is a significant step in terms of the wider agenda of social inclusion and once you actually have better social inclusion you typically see of course as a result an improvement in the conditions surrounding overall discrimination and violence but I would like to just also underline the fact that trans women, trans men, gender diverse persons are fighting decades of stigmatising the scores prejudice, they in general as populations have significantly lower health outcomes in very many aspects so in my view this is a work that is going to take more than a five years or ten years cycle of public policy to ensure that they are not the ones being left behind. Okay well you didn't exactly answer my question about concrete evidence examples of acts of violence against trans people being reduced but you talked about other examples of your view. I wondered, convener, I've got one last question if I may, I'm slightly confused about the living free and equal report that you talk about because I believe that from the research that I've done it doesn't provide a legal basis for the recommendations that you're making and I wondered on two points is there an obligation for Scotland to enact reform in allowing anyone to change their sex by self-id so is there a legal obligation and secondly the UK case equality and human rights commission says that the current DRA is in line with international human rights obligations I just wondered if you agreed on that. Well I think that that relates to a question about the way in which my opinion described these different elements. Legal recognition of gender identity is seen widely as, as I mentioned in my introduction, inextricably linked to equal recognition and protection under the law and in that sense it is a human rights obligation as seen uniformly by all United Nations human rights bodies that have expedited themselves in the matter and when you talk about the report of free and equal that's only one of a series of sources that actually I include in my legal opinion in relation to this. I think there is a significant body of evidence that was compiled by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights when preparing for example the legal opinion that the High Commissioner presented to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on advisory opinion of C24. What was contained therein and which is cited in my opinion is the legal construction upon which the High Commissioner for Human Rights has based themselves in actually supporting the idea that legal recognition of gender identity is an imperative. I would cite also that the resolutions that create my very own mandate of which of course we know that the United Kingdom is very supportive create also an understanding that gender identity is a significant driver for violence and discrimination that needs to be assessed and that the creation of my mandate actually signals that precisely that acknowledgement. I think that then when we talk about self-identification the understanding is that it's recognised as best practice standard, the standard to follow and I hope that you will allow me to just say two more sentences in relation to this. One of them is because there has been significant evidence built on the fact that any requirements that actually placed the decision on recognition of gender identity outside of the individual concern were very much seen as violations of human rights pathologisation is one example and of course assessment by judicial or administrative bodies is another example that tended to reproduce stigma and bias. I would like to ask your question in regards to the evidence that you have gathered in regards to the subject and what were some of the key findings that really stood out to you? I know it's quite a general question but it could be quite broad but pinning down a couple of those main issues would be really helpful. Absolutely. Very quickly to mention to you that in the furtherance of my mandate I actually carried out three main inquiries on the issue of legal recognition of gender identity and then all of the rest of my work has also surrounded sexual orientation and gender identity. So you could ask me perhaps or you're asking me what are my main findings of the last five years of my work in the United Nations and my last 15 years as working with these issues and I think that the main ones I will describe are in the axis of inclusion and exclusion. In the axis of inclusion I will say that the main findings are four. First one is gender identity is recognised under a very robust body of evidence under international human rights law as a trait that must be protected from discrimination and violence and of course the second one is that legal recognition allows that creation of a relationship of the individual with the state and eliminate the elements that create social exclusion and in that sense trans non-binary gender diverse persons around the world significantly benefit from that legal recognition and I think that this is what your previous colleagues question was inviting me to explain. I can give a very specific example in relation to that. When I started working 15 years ago at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights we did a mapping of violence against trans women and in particular killings of trans women and what we came out back with in terms of official statistics was that there was zero killings of trans women and the reason was very simple because there was no legal recognition of trans women they were all registered as men that had been killed and it took a deep dive into the data to actually begin to see the magnitude of violence against them which now as we know in Latin America one trans woman gets killed every day and elements that of course can be extrapolated under different elements. The third finding is that there are significant numbers and elements of evidence supporting the standards that guide legal recognition and this is where the work of the High Commissioner for Human Rights which I think he restated to one of the media outlets in the UK in the last couple of days is that there's a number of standards for legal recognition and that includes self-identification, a simple administrative procedure and so on and so forth which I have included in my opinions. Finally there's another angle of my findings which is about narratives that I have studied in which I received significant submissions in my reports on gender and that is the ones concerning what I call exclusionary narratives that basically either go in the range of denying that trans women exist or trans men or gender non-binary persons to the realm of actually accepting that they exist but under a somewhat limited legal capacity as human beings that would recognise them as women or men except for certain cases and there is where I have actually analysed the triad of elements that I have mentioned before that come recurrently in the narratives and where I have analysed also the risk of perpetuating violence and discrimination and stigma in relation to these issues. One last sentence, I said that all of my other inquiries have angles relating and of course they have angles relating to lesbian women, bisexual persons, gay men and so on and so forth. That includes my work on data where I'm actually quite keen on underlining that I am very worried about the lack of existence of data affecting lesbian women, bisexual women for example in the health field where we tend to have more information on gay men and trans women because they are designated as key population on their HIV AIDS programming and that means that actually more resources have been available to map their health situation so the asymmetries within LGBT communities themselves which impact disproportionately lesbian women and trans men and bisexual persons of both sexes are also very concerning to me and there you have an example where my work on data has actually also drawn from these perspectives. That's really helpful Victor thank you. I'd like to if I could just follow up with that convener and just ask in regards to the data how helpful you know it's a hard scale to kind of you know pin down but you know how helpful would that be if trans people could gain access to a GRC easier than they are now would that help our data overall? Well my assumption has always been that complexity in the procedure is a deterrent in itself right complexity in the procedure the othering of persons the placement of decisions on a person's gender identity in external bodies other than the individual concern all of these issues actually function as a deterrent and therefore tend to learn the picture. The most extreme example of this is of course ambits of criminalisation which is not the case in the UK but countries in which criminalisation exists of either sexual orientation and gender identity have in my view zero possibilities of claiming full integrity of their data because you would never be able to ask people if they're a lesbian or if they're gay under ambits of criminalisation. The same thing I think is applicable in ambits and environments of deep stigmatisation and prejudice we're actually self identifying and even accessing to procedures might be a deterrent in itself so of course simplicity and adherence to international standards actually will significantly create a more accurate picture of what reality looks like. Thank you, thank you, convener, and thank you very much for everything that you've shared with us so far in the evidence and for giving us your time this evening, Victor, it's much, much appreciated. I know what you've just said about data and around health and I'll re-watch or look over the official record after because I thought that that was really helpful and I know that a colleague of mine has an amendment in on that area and it's somewhere that we're something that we're really keen to look at. I'll move to my questions. You will have heard, as I'm sure you will have heard, that some people have been quite worried about this legislation and I know that your concerns about some of the conflations that have been made in the bodies that have been raised, but I just want to ask you specifically about the impact in some countries of self declaration systems and whether or not you've seen any evidence anywhere of women who have self excluded from women's only spaces as a result of this. Thank you very much for that question because it's actually quite, of course, I think that it's a significant concern for even the overlap between different mandates because of course, as I've said to you, I actually have the mandate of studying discrimination and violence against lesbian women, bisexual women, so it goes beyond the remit of only trans women and I'm concerned about services and spaces in that connection. On this, I rely on those that gather information best, which is governments and in the absence of governments, civil society in relation to the field. I am guided, for example, by the statement that I understand and that I've read, made by seven organisations operating services in Scotland that have been operating trans-inclusive services for what I understand is 15 years and have reported no particular instances of abuse or patterns of self-exclusion. Same thing, I would say, from other countries in which self identification is the standard as well as countries that have legal recognition even though they haven't achieved the standard of self identification. Those are trends that I actually need to see until the evidence say otherwise as hypothetical. Now, I would like to tell you that, of course, my work didn't start when I was appointed United Nations independent expert. I have been a member of the top committee for prevention of torture, where I visited crisis centres and hospitals and centres in many countries of the world, and because of my particular remit as Rapporteur on LGBT issues, I visited particular centres that had either inclusionary or exclusionary policies. I never saw that type of trend being documented in any country that I visited, which included countries that have legal gender recognition. Before that, I was the technical adviser in charge of creating the unit on LGBTI issues at the Inter-American Commission. We did significant mapping. This is not an issue that ever came as a trend. To me, it is actually puzzling on the basis of which evidence that argument is being made, particularly because I assumed that, in case that a need had a reason where claims of self-exclusion, I would imagine that there would have been diagnosing studies, and I am not aware of such trends or relating evaluations on that end. Thank you. I appreciate that fulsome answer. On a similar vein, just where you finished on evaluations and reviews, you will know that a number of people who are critical of the legislation have said that an absence of evidence is not an evidence of absence. Scottish Labour has proposed amendments asking for regular reviews of the impacts of the legislation to gather the information that we might need. Have you seen any examples of similar monitoring in international legislation and what has it found? Well, yes. I think that there are two issues in relation to that. The first one is that, in my experience of dialoguing for, as long as I have been working, public policy makers, evaluations and studies are usually made on the basis of a need. You begin by actually having certain working theories that arise from administrative or judicial findings, and then you actually may work your way into patterns or models that then lead to working theories that require studies or evaluations in this respect. I think that I used the expression before of saying that, otherwise, one is creating solutions in search of problems. I do not think that this is the way in which evaluation of public policy goes. Again, because of the absence of particular judicial or administrative findings that actually would go and reveal these trends, I am not really sure that that is a strong fundament to actually go on a whole line of inquiry that appears to have already predetermined what the finding would be. To me, that is not the way that I understand public policy and evaluation of public policy works, unless, of course, it is used with a particular objective, which in this case might be to, again, look for a problem to match a solution that has already been found. Thank you. Okay, thank you for that. Thank you, convener, and good evening, Victor. Due to time constraints, the committee has not been able to hear from many groups who want to give evidence to the committee, including survivors of domestic violence and abuse. Why do you think that it was important that we hear from you for the second time, and what new evidence do you bring with you to date in the committee? Oh, well, thank you very much for that question. It allows me perhaps to bring more clarity to the framework that I created in my introduction. I think that it was important that I accept the invitation because I am mandated by the United Nations member states to provide advisory services where governmental and state agencies so require. Therefore, I do not think that it would be in a very happy position if I were to reject such a kind and generous invitation to make some clarifications in relation to the opinion that I rendered in June. You may be perhaps asking as to why I was invited, but clearly the motivation for the invitation is something that I do not have control of myself. Having said that, I do have the ability of actually considering whether something is absolutely redundant. I do not think that is the case because from the way the public debate has actually proceeded since June, there were, as I said, three elements that were deeply concerning to me. One is what I consider to be the misrepresentation of this longstanding position of the UN, which was reinforced amongst others by the statement of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to a Media Outlet in the last few days. The other ones were, of course, the continued use of this conversation, in my opinion, in that context, as a proxy for a discussion that appears not to be connected to it, which is an argument about the very legal recognition of gender identity, which, in my understanding, is not what this bill is about. So I think that in my mind there is a very clear added value in reinstating what the international human rights law acknowledgement of gender identity of legal recognition and that absence of connection with the whole issue that we are debating in relation to the specifics of simplifying the procedure. The Muslim Council of Scotland has written in a letter to the Cabinet Secretary in which it states that, for Muslims where protected single-sex basis are a religious requirement for the abolition and the prayer and for access to a range of services and leisure opportunities, this proposed legislation risks undermining our range of their human rights by opening access to legal masqueraders, but at the same time also the Scottish Association of Mosques wrote to the Cabinet Secretary stating that this bill would potentially give access to female-only spaces and services, including critical safe spaces for girls under 16, to men who have self-declared their gender, including at places where women and girls are most vulnerable. That creates a clear safeguarding issue. Those organisations represent thousands of Muslims in Scotland. In your opinion, are they wrong to hold those concerns? Could you please tell the committee what analysis you have undertaken of the impact of the bill on women of faith and their access and or self-exclusion from single-sex services and spaces? Thank you very much for that question. It dwells into something that I am currently very interested in, which is this alleged tension between freedom of religion and belief and freedom from violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. So thank you very much for that. I will place it in the general context of my joint work with the United Nations successive United Nations special reporters on freedom of religion and belief. The first manifestation of which was the issuance of a statement backed up by, I believe, it was 115 independent experts at the United Nations and regional level in which there was a clear point of departure on the fact that in the substance of the functioning of these rights, not only there is no contradiction but there is actually interdependence and mutual reinforcement. The reason for that is because freedom of religion and belief and freedom from violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity are both based on the number of rights articulated in the global and regional systems that refer to equal recognition before the law, freedom of expression and, in general, dignity and the constructions that are attached there to. I think that this already gives you a clue as to what my thinking is in relation to these issues and which I will elaborate further on when I present my report to the Human Rights Council in June of 2023 on this very issue, which is the connectivity of these two conceptual constructions. I don't think, by the way, that concerns are ever wrong. I think that what is very healthy is to understand what are the basis of concerns and how they can be actually addressed through respectful democratic debate. So you make reference of particular communities that fear that men masquerading as women will penetrate certain spaces. On that, I would actually say that there is one element in the legal construction that answers to this and its legal recognition of gender identity implies that trans women are women and therefore you cannot make the construction under human rights based approaches that trans women are men penetrating any space whatsoever. Now, in the cases, in the cases where they may be legitimate concerns and this is something that the Commissioner on Human Rights by the Council of Europe brilliantly described in her report in the cases where they may be significant, let's say, views and concerns that arise in a process of integration, then they need to be solved on a case by case basis. That, in particular, requires an analysis that is called, of course, on the basis of non-discrimination analysis which has a number of elements which are very uniform throughout international human rights law, which is proportionality, necessity and so on and so forth. My point here is that what is not supported by the evidence in relation to international human rights based approaches is that you would restrict the rights of a whole community of population based on a particular stigmatising or discriminatory view. That includes, of course, instances where particular women may have long-held trauma in relation to particular populations and how to handle that needs to be done on the basis of non-discrimination analysis. I think my message in here is there are tools in the international human rights based system to actually ensure that legitimately held concerns, as the Commissioner of Human Rights of the Council of Europe has said, can be channeled in a way that is non-discriminatory, non-stigmatising in nature. I have a brief supplementary from Rachael Hamilton. Thank you, Joe. Just on this point, your mandate stresses the importance of respecting regional, cultural and religious values in human rights. How will the gender reform in terms of a self-id system impact everyone's human rights across the United Kingdom? I think it will bring the United Kingdom closer to conformity with what is considered the standard at the moment for legal recognition of gender identity. I am, however, not sure that I would place my evaluation in that connection in particular religious or social wars. This is not really the angle that I am basing my analysis on. My analysis is one of international human rights law systems in which the United Kingdom is, like every other state, a key stakeholder in the formation of what is a consensus that has been long held. It would be very puzzling to me how this decided position in relation to legal recognition of gender identity could actually, which has been held. Again, I gave at my introduction a reference to the constructive and clear interaction that the United Kingdom has had in relation to my reports. It's very hard for me to see how this could be in a way a contradiction. Okay, thank you. I'll fill to McGregor. Thank you very much, convener, and good evening to Victor. My question, Victor, is on something that we've already referred to. It's last week the Council of Europe's commissioner for human rights in her report on our visit to the UK, in which she notes it in a quote here, that trans persons in the UK face increasingly hostile and toxic political and public discourse. You won't push your views on this, and can you comment on the impact of such discourses, such as we've seen during the course of this debate, are having on this in any minority community? I'm sorry, it was not very clear the sound. Can I ask you to please repeat the question? Yeah, no problem. Do you need me to repeat it right from the start? Just a question. Just a question, okay. I wonder if you can comment on the impact of such discourse, what impact it can have on the trans community here in Scotland and indeed any minority community? Ah, thank you very much. Well, this is of course a very interesting question. I've already referred to the fact that in what concerns my remit, which is of course persons affected by discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity, I have significant concerns about how this admittedly toxic debate actually will impact the notion of what safe spaces are and how persons will be relating to those safe spaces when they face in that space persons that in the beginning of things should not be stigmatized as men dressed as women penetrating those spaces for predatory purposes. I am enormously concerned of what this is going to do to actually the perception of safety in those spaces. And again, this is in the light of just the realization that it is absolutely arbitrary, undemocratic to take away the rights of a whole community, in this case trans women or trans men, just because they are these long held views that they don't really exist or that they're not really women. Now, I need to be, let me be quite measured in the way that I extrapolate this to other communities because it is not my area of expertise. But I think for politicians that are debating and considering the matter, one of the questions that I think is valid is to what extent this actually affects a wider population of women and girls. To what extent the stigma and discrimination against trans persons and the nature of their presence in these spaces is actually going to create an atmosphere, an artificial atmosphere of moral panic and impact the notion of safety in these spaces. And I think that therein lies significant political responsibility to ensure that the debate is evidence-based and abandons stigma as one of the departure points. Thank you, convener. You've talked a lot about the toxicity of the debate in the UK and the effect that that is having on trans people in particular, but also on gender women, because, as you say, they have every reason to be afraid of predatory men, so elected representatives and liberties linking this legislation to that separate issue is going to cause fear. I wondered if that's something you've seen happen on a similar scale in other countries that have implemented similar procedures and whether you have advice for politicians on how to address those concerns, maybe the best practice that you've seen elsewhere. Thank you very much for that question. In my report on narratives and practices of exclusion, I actually studied quite a wide evidence-based in this respect. I believe that there is a number of contexts that are cited in that report in which I've seen these stigmatising attitudes translate into that zero-sum game dialogue that the commissioner of human rights of the council of Europe was referring to. Of course, this is to the gain of those that are actually feeding this frenzy, but I don't think it's in the gain of communities and populations that are historically submitted to discrimination and violence. That pretty much includes a chunk across populations and communities around this globe. I think that it is a rather destructive use of trans lives for instrumentalising their purposes, but also of narratives invoking the very real issue of violence against women in all of their diversity at the service of the creation of this atmosphere of moral panic that feeds these purposes. My advice, I think it's by no means something that is a mystery, is evidence. Stigma is by definition fueled by lack of evidence. You're just hoping that your voice is loud enough or strong enough or that it appears to be supported by a sufficient number of persons, and then you're hoping that that will be the evidence in itself. That's the definition of rhetorical devices. I think that against that, and I use the word intently against that kind of approach, evidence-based approaches are actually acting everyone to take a look at the evidence that exists, that is credible, that is not basically planted in there, but it's actually following due process, scientific methods, ethical frameworks of research, so that studies can actually ensure a credibility framework and then conclude what the evidence tells us. So far, what the evidence tells me is that this connection is artificial. Okay. Thanks very much. I think that we have gone a bit over time, so I'm going to end this session here. Thanks hugely, Victor, for making time to come along. We'll now suspend the meeting and we'll resume in about 10 minutes. Thank you, Mr Convener, and thank you to everyone. I've got a great honour to be with you. Goodbye. Okay, thank you, and welcome back. I would like to welcome to the meeting Rhym Alsalem, UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls. I can invite Rhym to make a short opening statement, please. First of all, I'd like to thank you really for having me. Even though it's late in the process, I very much welcome the opportunity to elaborate on the letter that I had sent and also on the issues that I've raised. Can you hear me? Yes, Rhym, we can hear you. Okay. Many of the issues that I had mentioned echo points made by feminist organisations and victims. So, in a nutshell, I wanted to emphasise that, of course, the issues that I have raised are not about legal recognition or it's being a right in international human rights law. The issue is that self-id has no established basis in international law. While, of course, the reform can be based on self-id, there is no basis in international law to have an unhinged self-id process. I think that it's very sort of logical and legitimate to expect that any process where there will be access to a group of individuals that may be vulnerable, such as women and children, by sex offenders are firewalled by safeguards or have safeguards attached to them. Likewise, any process where you would have access to additional rights would have to be regulated. On the first one, I would say that our experience as women born female is that those violent males who can take advantage of any loopholes will do so in order to get into women's faces and have access to women. Our experience as women born female tells us this. Of course, when it comes to policies where there is safeguarding expected, it does not mean by any means that we are saying that everyone will commit fences. For example, you have safeguarding policies at schools, you have safeguarding policies in hospitals and at police stations, and it does not mean that all police officers, if there is a case of a police officer raping a woman, are rapists. The issue is that we have to make sure that there is protection in place for any policy where there is access to women and children. All I was saying through this letter is that there are a number of issues that still need to be worked through when it comes to the GRA reform and that this is now a good opportunity to do a comprehensive adjustment of the GRA because there are issues preceding the current reform that have to be addressed. One of them is its relationship to the Equality Act. One of it is also the impact on single sex spaces, including the reasons why women self-exclude. It is taking the time to do this properly and not to rush through it, while at the same time ensuring that we look at the totality of rights for women in all their diversity. I believe that it does not have to be a zero-sum game. You can actually work out a system where you look at the co-existence of rights for different groups of women because that is also what an intersectional approach is all about. I thank you, Rheem. If I could just now ask Maggie to go to questions with her first. Thank you very much. Good evening, Rheem. Thank you very much for joining us this evening. I appreciate you making the time to be with us. I have two questions for you, if I may. Firstly, I would like to explore your reflections on the Council of Europe commissioners for human rights, Dynia Miatovic's report, where she says that both Government officials and certain parliamentarians have actively contributed to an intolerant and stigmatising discourse, and that is the end of the quote, where she critiques the culture wars surrounding trans rights in Scotland. She also says in that report that trans persons in the UK face increasingly hostile and toxic political and public discourse. Can I ask you what your thoughts on her report in general, but on those two points specifically, given the context within which we are discussing and debating this bill? Yes, thank you for that question. I must say that one of the main problems is precisely that, when there are groups of women coming forward trying to reassert the sex characteristics and discrimination that they endure based on sex characteristics and try to ensure protection for single sex spaces, they are accused of hate speech, they are accused of intolerance, they are accused of being trans, they are lumped together automatically with all sorts of other movements, be it anti-abortion, be it this, be it that. Therefore, there is no space for them to also practice their human rights of freedom of expression. As a result, it also negates the opportunity for these groups of women to express and reassert their needs based on their identities and profiles, which is very legitimate. The international human rights law does not negate the protection of sex characteristics and does not erase them. More recently, we looked at discrimination and violence against women based on gender identity, but also sex. We cannot conflate the two and we cannot say that one equals the other. While I recognise that LGBTIQ persons do face discrimination, including in Europe, and do face intolerance, we have to address that. It does not all mean that, therefore, we can deny others the right to express their needs. I asked specifically on the impacts of the culture wars that trans people are on the brunt of and experiencing. You talked about the freedom of expression. We have heard elsewhere in our evidence that freedom exists up to a point where it does not impinge on the freedom of other people to exist. That is an important statement to make. In the letter that you wrote last month, you spoke about the need to listen and take account of and evaluate the responses in the consultation processes and scrutiny processes that the Scottish Government and the committee have undertaken. In your letter, you said that consultations were not perhaps sufficiently inclusive of other groups of women and organisations that represent them. Given that we have heard from the Scottish Women's Aid, the rape crisis in Scotland and some of their network members from the Scottish Women's Rights Centre, all of whom support the reforms that are within the bill. I am interested in which other women's organisations in Scotland, in the domestic Scottish setting, have you approached or who have approached you? Where does your evidence for calling for the bill to have, as you call it, a comprehensive refresh? I wanted to come back to your earlier comment about culture wars. I do not think that this is the right way to characterise it. It is about a fundamental human rights issue, about how we can ensure the coexistence of rights of different groups in society in a dignified and equal way, without one erasing the other for your other question. Much of that is mentioned in the reports on the sessions that the Parliament has had, where a number of Scottish organisations have come forward and have said that they either have not been consulted, that they have been victims, that they have not had access to the parliamentary committee, that they have been detransitioners who have been asked to come in very late in the process. One thing is, of course, participation, which may or may not have happened to varying degrees, but what has been clear to me also from the story of letters that I received after sending my letter is that they have not been sufficiently digested, taken into consideration and considered. Those persons may have been consulted, but there is a difference between being asked for your opinion and feeling that you are not heard or that whatever you say actually doesn't matter. Okay, thank you. Just two quick points to follow up on. The reference to culture wars comes from the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights. I think that that is clearly her statement. Whether or not I agree with it, I happen to agree with it, just to be clear, that when she says that Government officials and certain parliamentarians have contributed actively to the intolerance and stigmatising discourse within the cultural wars context, that is a direct quote from her report. On the organisations that have been in touch with you, you wrote in your letter about very clearly listening to organisations and survivors of violence. It is worth restating that the Scottish Women's Rights Centre, the Great Crisis Scotland and Scottish Women's Aid who all directly support victims of violence, victims and survivors of gender-based violence are all supportive of those reforms. I appreciate the time that is short, so I will leave it there. Thank you very much. I will now go to Pam Goswell, please. Thank you, convener. Good evening, Rhym. In your letter, you mentioned that ring-fence funding should be available for service providers that are sex-based and those that are gender-based. While that was determined that it was out of the scope of the bill, do you think that it would be helpful for an amendment to the Scottish Government to at least review the impact of the bill on funding for single-sex services and set out any further steps that are considered necessary following the review? Absolutely. One of the reasons why a pause would be useful is to carry out some of the impact assessments that have been missing, not only in Scotland but in other countries that have perhaps adopted legislation on self-id, because what you can see across the board is that there have not been impact assessments on different groups of women that may have been affected by this legislation, not just those that may acquire gender or gender reassignment certificates or self-id, but also those that are other groups of women, particularly those in single-sex spaces, including prisons, including victims' shelters for victims. That would be very useful. Precisely to collect data that is not only gender but also includes sex. I am afraid that there is an increasing deprioritisation and neglect of collecting sex data. That leads to the conflation of data results. For example, if you see inmates in a prison, the number of sex offenders in prisons has gone up that are women, but you do not know that they are born male, for example, you might draw the wrong conclusions. In addition to that, what is really important, and I had suggested this to Government, is that why not take this opportunity to also undertake amendments in the GRA that are problematic. That already exists. For example, if you look at the exceptions, especially with the last ruling by the judge, I think that it is by Lady Halvin. I think that what shows that males with a GRC are considered legally female. I think that that shows that there is an impact, therefore, with the reform on the Equality Act. Why not also, first of all, wait to see what the UK Government thinks? How are we going to resolve the issue in the Equality Act? The definition of sex is still understood to be biological, but if you look at the exceptions in the GRA, you probably have to allow for information to be disclosed when it comes to decisions about access to single-sex spaces. Right now, that is not explicitly stated, and that is causing a lot of problems for service providers to assess who to let into a single-sex space. There are things in the GRA that are already problematic, even without the latest round of reforms that could also be addressed before we move to another set of reforms that can be problematic. Thank you, Rhym. Just on that, another question. Since you have published your letter to the UK Government, several parties have reached out to speak with you to gain a deeper understanding of your intervention. At the meeting that I was in attendance, you briefly mentioned that in Belgium, mechanised used to safeguard the bill and reject applications is legislated for under public order. Can you talk about that in further detail with the committee today and perhaps outline any other international examples of safeguards that have been used to make the process more robust in the face of bad faith actors? As I said, I think that we need to take any examination of other countries' legislation with a grain of salt, because each country context is very country specific. Scotland is part of a union, whether we like it or not, and it is the equality act and the relationship of any legislation that happens in Scotland has to be assessed to the wider UK territory. What happens in Scotland does not stay in Scotland, and we have heard the comments by Westminster on that and the implications for movement. I think that we should continue to look at the needs, requirements and situations of Scotland and the UK. That is number one. I do not think that any of us is an expert on how other countries have done their processes, what has gone well and what has not, on the extent of consultation. One thing across the board is the lack of data, the lack of impact evaluations. I have seen, for example, even though, for example, the Belgian legislation, and I am also Belgian in addition to being Jordanian, looks at the possibility to reject an application based on public order by the prosecutor. It is clear that they have also not carried out an impact assessment, and when they collect data, they do not collect data based on sex. Is it good that they have some additional safeguards there when it comes to self-id by children or even acquiring a gender recognition certificate? There are different models depending on whether parents agree how old the child is, etc. They come to something that makes sense for them, but we have to look at that holistically and bring that back to Scotland and the needs of everyone in Scotland. Thank you, Rhym, for emphasising how important the collection of data is in the review of it, and that is some of the main factors forward. Okay, thank you, and can I go to Fulton MacGregor, please? Thanks very much, convener, and good evening, Rhym. Thank you very much for coming to do this today. I know that it was quite a tight schedule as well for you. You have heard a wee bit of the last session that we heard from Victor, and he stated in his letter that he was quite concerned about the misrepresentation of the existing consensus within the bodies and entities of the UN human rights system. I wonder what your take is on that consensus. How often are you that your views are also those of the bodies and entities of the UN human rights system? As I said, there is a consensus that persons should have access to legal recognition, and that this should happen in a way that is consistent with the fundamental principles of dignity, and also be consistent with human rights, etc. As I said, I do not think that there is consensus. I have not seen a consensus that countries can adopt a self-id model. I think that it can be based on self-id, but there is no proof anywhere that it should be unhinged that we should have a complete disregard for safeguards. Often, there is a reference to the Yogi Carter principles, which, by the way, are not binding, which erased the issue of sex completely from their consideration. When it comes to our opinions or positions as special rapporteurs, we, as you know, are independent experts. We represent our views. We try to base our opinions on established human rights law, but our opinions are not firm binding positions on anyone other than ourselves, and, in fact, there are instances in which we disagree with each other. We try to develop jurisprudence and push the envelope, but we cannot say that it is established jurisprudence or that we speak on behalf of the UN or that we represent the UN. Thanks very much for that clarification. Sorry, convener, am I okay for another question? Yeah, I think you're okay, yeah. Thanks very much, convener, I know that the time is tight. We've heard on both sides of this debate a lot of talk about needing empirical evidence, and I know that you describe needing that evidence in the context of safeguarding and risk management protocols. I wonder what evidence from other countries that you have got, because, in your answer to Pam Gosel, you spoke a bit about the fact that there has not been a lot of data collected across certain sort of areas. What evidence is it that you think is there that has informed your own views and interventions on that issue? I mean, one thing is the lack of a concerted effort to do impact assessments to collect data based on sex. As I said, I do think that there is evidence. There is evidence in different reports that we see in the media. For example, if you go to certain managers of prisons, they will have evidence where the violation of a single sex sanctity for female prisoners has caused problems. The issue is, of course, that it's not consolidated, it's not brought together, it's not analysed and, therefore, you don't see the trends. For example, I was quite intrigued by the fact that I read in one research paper that, since 2018, for example, there have been at least 30 cases in the UK brought forward by feminists, NGOs, women organisations in which they tried to challenge their erasure of single sex spaces and to reassert their right to identification based on sex. Of course, if you don't see this all brought together in one place, you would say, okay, it's not really an issue. Women are not really raising this as an issue. What's the fuss about, basically? It is an issue, and it is an issue for many. We see this also in many countries across Europe and across the world. A very small example is that, since I've written this letter, I've been contacted personally by a number of women organisations in all their diversity, including trans women, that have said that this is a concern for them. Self-exclusion is a concern for them. They say that the understanding of the need for dignity is not present, that it doesn't have to be contact-based sexual violence. If you have somebody in your space that will look at you, that will flash you, that you are fearing of being in their vicinity, that is also a form of violence. I'm afraid that being male, you may not male identifying as a man, you may not understand these issues. It also comes down to who do you ask about these things and whose voices do we hear about these issues. Of course, men do not go through the same experiences and therefore may not have a full understanding of the implications of something as simple as that, but as essential as that. During our evidence session, some witnesses did raise some concerns to those set out in your letter, whereas others, such as Rape Crisis Scotland, explained that single-sex services like theirs have never required a gender certificate nor asked someone to provide proof of any gender, and they also noted that their services have been trans inclusive for 15 years. Have you had any discussions with single-sex providers in Scotland and who were the organisations in Scotland that you engaged with on your conclusions in the letter? I just want to be clear on two things. First, I wanted to say that I am still on mission in Libya and I've been here for a whole week and I wish that I had more time to really concentrate on this as much as I wanted to, but I'm doing this under very strenuous circumstances. The other thing is that I've engaged in conversations with anyone that has reached out to engage with me. There have been a number of organisations that I really would like to also respect their privacy and confidentiality, so unless they come forward to say that they have met with me, my policy has been—or unless they agreed that my policy has been not to disclose this publicly like that. That said, again, many of them are listed in the notes or the reports on the parliamentary sessions. You know who they are because they have spoken out about this issue. We come back to the fact that, even before this latest reform, you have a situation where it is very difficult for on-the-ground service providers to decide what to do with somebody who is not female even if they don't have a GRT because of the criminalisation of disclosing information because of the lack of funds available for single sex spaces. We have seen that a high-profile person last week, a writer, decided to fund a centre in Edinburgh because it doesn't exist, and because there is pressure on those who provide single sex spaces not to do so. By the way, this is not just in Scotland—you hear this also in Canada—where it is considered actually not acceptable if you want to protect that space because you are not inclusive because you are not sensitive enough. Actually, that is not even the right issue because we are saying single sex spaces alongside gender-based. We are not saying that we are going to abolish mixed sex spaces. They continue to exist. They exist in abundance, but the issue is to make that other option available to those who want it. I was listening to your question about, for example, women belonging to religious minorities. I have to say that it is really any victim or anyone at risk of violence. It is not a job to second-guess them or to question why they feel this way. It is our job as states and as organisations to reduce the barriers for access. If those barriers mean having mixed sex spaces in them, we have to find a solution, because they are often among the most vulnerable. That is required by an intersectional approach. It is to look at the different groups that face more barriers to access services that have higher rates of violence, and to help them to access the protection and assistance that they need. To do that, we have to understand what reasons they have for making decisions. If that reason also includes mixed sex spaces, we have to work on that. Without passing judgments and without saying that this is transphobic or that it is hate speech, the others do not exist. They do not have their needs. They do not say that they should have access to services. They are just saying that we have specific needs and that we would just like to have a space for us. Okay, thank you. In forming your view of the proposed legislation in the way that you set it out in the letter to the cabinet secretary, what consideration did you give to international examples that already have self-id systems and what evidence have you taken specifically on those? Sorry, I do not understand the question. Could you repeat please? Yes, sorry. When you were forming your view in the letter that you wrote to the cabinet secretary, what examples or evidence did you look at from where self-identification systems have been used in other jurisdictions internationally and how did that help to inform your view? Thank you for that question. I want to come back to the reason of why I intervened on this. I intervened on it from the perspective of my mandate. I am not looking at this on whether persons are entitled to self-id or not. The issue of legal recognition, as I said, is something that I find is already established in international law. Self-id is not, but the point of entry and what I have looked at in my letter is not whether there should be self-id or not is the impact of an unhinged self-id without appropriate safeguards on the access and enjoyment of protection and assistance by women in all their diversity that are either experiencing violence or at risk of violence. If we look at it this way, we will also take into consideration, as I said, the extent to which they are included, meaningfully in conversations, their views are taken into consideration, the impact of certain policies on their access and the barriers, including self-exclusion. It becomes a different entry point, I have to say. I want to draw your attention to one thing. My colleague who spoke before me and of course his mandate had in 2019 presented a report on the issue of data when it comes to the presence of adequate data on the experiences of violence that LGBTQI persons experience. He said very clearly, and I agree with him, that the fact that data does not exist, let us say, on the violence experienced by LGBTQI persons does not mean that it does not exist. Of course, the state has to collect data very deliberately and very consciously. I would like to invite us to, by analogy, move this also to what we are discussing now. The fact that data does not exist or is not consolidated—I think that it exists, as I said—is not consolidated and is not sought for. It is not a reflection that we do not have a problem, it is a reflection on the fact that nobody is looking for it, because we have victims and women organisations telling us that they have been telling us for many years now and have told us again in this context that it is a problem. I have one final question. In the concerns that you have raised and that other people have raised and to help to ensure that public bodies, for example, in Scotland deliver the reform gender recognition process that we know, trans people need and understand their responsibilities as well to women and girls under the equality act, do you believe that the Scottish Government should introduce guidance to give clear advice to public bodies and the wider public on how they act and operate? It should include guidance, because I cannot hear you really well for the connection, could you repeat? Of course, I am sorry. Given some of the concerns that people have raised, do you think that it would be helpful for the Government to issue guidance in this area? I think that it would be helpful to issue guidance, but frankly, on its own, this is not enough. It is like a bandage solution to a much wider and more systematic clause with the process and with the draft legislation as it stands. I would suggest that, again, we go back and we address all these different pieces, because they are all linked to each other and not to try to suggest that there will be a magical solution to some of the issues by non-binding guidance. Some things have to be clarified and spelled out in law. This is what women organisations and many victims expect. This is what lawyers and experts expect and know to reasonably expect that we have seen this in other legislations. It comes back to slowing down and doing things and looking comprehensively at what needs to be adjusted and what needs to be done, of which one of them could be more detailed guidance. Thank you for that. Are there other amendments in this area on the legislation that you will be aware that we will be looking at this week? Are there other amendments that you think could be helpful in terms of the assurance? I just want to mention one area. I did not mention it in my letter because I did not have time to delve into it, but I know that others have talked about lowering the age for children. I am not going to speak to that because it was not in my letter addressed to the Governments, so I cannot speak on it publicly. However, that is a whole area that needs to be looked at very carefully. As I said, article 22 of the GRA, the exceptions, felling out specifically that you can disclose information, for example, in order to make decisions about whether maintaining single sex spaces is legitimate and proportionate to a legitimate aim. There is a wording that is presented in there. We are not out of the woods on resolving the whole issue about whether the definition of sex is biological or legal. That decision seems to suggest that it is legal. What does Westminster say? Will there be a legal challenge for that? It does certainly complicate more access to provision of services based on that. That decision means that males with a GRC, according to Lady Heldin's decision, males with a GRC are considered legally female. The assertion by the Government, or at least in some instances by the Scottish Government that there is no impact whatsoever by the GRA in its new form on the Equality Act is quite challenged by that decision. I want to pick you up on a point that you said that you had not responded to in your letter, but that you wanted to raise. I wondered if you had concerns around the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that defines anyone under the age of 18 as a child, if you believed that that will have an impact, but also some of the views around a report called the cast report. I couldn't hear the last bit of the report and then I lost you. I think that we have lost Rachel. We will go to Karen Adam, please. Thank you for coming in this evening. In 2021, you joined with other UN mandated representatives to write to Bulgaria to ask them to make gender recognition a more simplified process based on self-identification. What has changed your mind this past year? Could you explain to us the evidence that prompted that? As I said, I think that legal recognition could be based on self-id, as long as there are safeguards. When I joined the letter, it was a month after becoming a mandate holder. Now, I have spent half of my mandate, almost a year and a half. And while I still hold the view that it can potentially be done, but of course also the European Court of Human Rights differs the decision on how to go about legal recognition to the state, so the state also would like to include the principles of self-id. Again, as I said, as long as safeguards are included, it is fine. I am not against it in principle. At the same time, in the last year and a half, I have become more aware of the issues surrounding the application of unhinged self-id issues. If you look at the letter to Bulgaria, we just addressed whether it should be done or not. In hindsight, I wish I knew then what I know now, because I would have qualified my joining much more. I would have spelled out these issues about safeguards. What I would definitely not have done is join a communication that falls back on the Yogi Carter declaration, because, frankly, now I know much more about the Yogi Carter declaration than I knew then, because also there are many who position the Yogi Carter declaration as being established human rights law. It is very clear to me now that it is not, and it is actually dangerous to look at it. I must say that there are other issues where initially they were not on my radar screen. Given that we are contacted by women organisations, victims and feminist organisations from all over the world, it also shapes and refines my understanding. I will give you an example. When I first became a rapporteur, I did not really think that custody issues were such a big issue for women. In fact, there were a lot of gender stereotypes and it could be used to perpetuate violence against women. Over the year and a half, I have been exposed to concerns by women all over the world. As a result, even though it was not on my radar and even though it was not intended, I am actually dedicating a whole report to it next year, because I realised or it has come to my attention that this is really an issue. I would say that what happened now is a bit similar in that respect. Can I just follow up on that? It is just to get some clarity on those points that you say if you knew now what you knew or if you knew then what you know now. There were some issues that came to light and there were some organisations that came and spoke to you. It is hard for me to get that understanding of where you are coming from just because you have given an example of custody, but I have not heard an example or evidence of why the change in opinion now. Do you have any examples that you could perhaps share with us? It is not a full change. As I said, I still believe and whether I believe it or not is irrelevant. It is established principle in human rights law that persons have a right to legal recognition of their gender identity. I think that that is clear. It can be possibly based on, it has to be, I think that we are losing view, could you? Could include of ID, but what I see missing now that I didn't fully understand back then is the lack of safeguards and the fact that when it is an unregulated process, it can impact enjoyment of rights by other groups of women and that it can cause also real concerns for them. I understand that better now. I also, by the way, understand that not just for Scotland, I understand that for Spain, for example, that is also going through a process where women have raised similar concerns. I have had people write to me from Germany, where apparently a similar law will be adopted on other countries. Again, this is not an isolated incident that we are seeing in Scotland. It is a reflection of a wider concern that we see in other countries. I welcome you. You mentioned that you had concerns with age. Do you agree with lowering the age from 18 to 16? Rachel, I have one constraint in answering your question stipulated by the rules of procedure that we have as mandate holders, which is that before I communicate on something publicly, I have to engage the Government on it. By that, I also mean the UK Government. In fact, it is my intention to dig my teeth into this, because I have been approached by either parents of children who have transitioned and feel that there were no safeguards about the way they transitioned. As we know, most of those are girls, so they do fall under my mandate. I have an intention to look at this more closely, but I made the reference to it, because I know that it is a big area of concern that others have expressed themselves on. Of course, there are very little bit of concerns. I can say that. I totally respect what you just said. You advised the Scottish Government in your letter to pause the bill, but given that we will be voting on the bill over the next two days, do you personally have confidence that MSPs that are not part of this committee, not on this call, will have time to adequately consider the evidence that you are giving today? My job is to provide expert opinion on issues that I feel are very pertinent. Of course, I very much appreciate that many stakeholders in the Scottish Government, but also wider Scottish society, have engaged with me and have reflected on the opinion that it has been thought through. I would like to consider whether they do so adequately. It is not for me to say that it is really something that they are accountable to Scottish society and the constituency that they represent. I think that that question is better answered by the people that the parliamentarians represent and whether they will be happy with the way that the Parliament makes the final decision on this. You also raised concerns in your letter that the views of women's groups and others critical of the bill had not been adequately considered in the bill. Do you think that those last minute committee sessions have done or will do anything to rectify that in your view, particularly for the women that you discuss, who feel that their protections are threatened by the potential of predatory men accessing single sex spaces or, indeed, their concerns around spaces becoming mixed sex and then choosing to self-exclude? To be frank, I am not aware of every single proposal or amendment that is being introduced. I know that you are really at it quite judiciously. Of course, time is of essence. I still feel that the need to pass something seems to still be more important than quality and outcome. However, as I said, this is really not for me to judge. In the end, I just present my opinion. It is really up for these women, including for example those from minorities, that you therefore have spoken to, to say whether the last set of adjustments really answer their concerns, whether they address them or whether they are cosmetic. I actually do not know what the latest shape of the reform bill looks like. That is fine. Thank you, convener. Thank you, and I apologise. I saw that I was cutting you off and transferring over to Rachel just slightly to you, Alex. Well, can Adam, please? Thank you, convener. No, it was just to follow up and just ask Rhym, when she noted when I asked what had changed her opinion on certain aspects of it and she said that she has seen it from all over the world, it was concerns. I am just trying to get to the bones of this. Is that concerns with evidence to back it up, or is it just solely the concerns that you are listening to that made you change your mind? I have seen evidence. It is not concentrated in one place. I have seen reports in the media by individual service providers, organisations and testimonies by victims. Again, they are not all on the same website, so to speak, or you cannot just go to one place and find them. That is also how we work. This is also outside of this issue. This is how I work. I am approached by victims and victim organisations. They present evidence. What counts as evidence is also their lived experience. We sometimes disregard that, but, as I said, when there is a lack of data or barriers to documenting and verbalising your concern, that is why what has been referred to as cultural war is really not a cultural war. It is a human rights issue. It is a right to be able to have your needs heard and concerned and addressed. That, for me, is evidence. I weigh the elements that they provide. I weigh the issues that are at stake, but also the rights that are at stake and the relevance to my mandate. I have not seen studies or research done on a particular experience of violence precisely because of access problems or barriers, but that is very real because of the experience that victims and victim organisations have. Through the interventions, the extent of it comes to light, and you realise that, if you scratch the surface, the tip of the iceberg was that there are so many stories and so many victims that have gone through so much and knocked on every door, including the doors of their Government, and nobody has listened to them either because of political agenda, interests, lobbying or criminalising. That is how it works. Rhym, as a survivor, I am very aware that there has been a lot of reference to survivors' evidence, particularly with reference to rape crisis services. Do you acknowledge that the bill does not impact on how those currently operate, as Pam Duncan Glancy outlined earlier? The self-id system is currently used by rape crisis services in Scotland. Do you acknowledge that there is not a single opinion among survivors on the issue? I agree that there is no one single opinion. As I said, the needs of those that are comfortable with gender-based spaces are addressed because that is the overwhelming majority of service providers in Scotland, so I think that there it really is not an issue. I also said that, even before the GRA, there is already a very real challenge in working out practically as a service provider how you can exclude transpersons in a way that is legitimate and that falls within the exception category. Whether they have a GRA or not, the issue is that, by making access to a GRC easier, it is very reasonable to expect that you will get more GRC holders and, therefore, that is going to potentially create also bigger challenges, whether on health services, as Victor said, but also on spaces that cater to women in their diversity and on spaces that should remain single sex. If you think of any policy or law that grants extra rights to a group, we take it for granted that we have to regulate that because we assume that, even if you make it easier, for example, for people to get handouts or to get additional loans or to get money, we know that if it is easier, you are going to get more people applying for it and you have to manage that increase. I mentioned on the BBC interview that there are so many things that we go through in life that nobody questions when we put safeguards in or when we try to regulate it. Even, for example, refugees. Someone is a refugee even before a Government recognises that they are refugees, so they are inherently refugees. Still, when they arrive at a country, there is a process to assess their credibility. There is a process to see if they fulfil the inclusion criteria of being protected under the 51 convention. Why? Because they will be entitled to other rights. I became Belgian last year. After five years, I was entitled to be Belgian. I felt Belgian certainly, but I still went through a process where the Government vetted whether I fulfilled the criteria of being Belgian and had also safeguards in place. They asked for my criminal record. I think that we are more surrounded by these processes that have safeguards and have different elements to it than we realise. Why should this be an exception? It does not violate the rights if we do it in a proportionate, exceptional way. We are not saying that it should not be simplified, but we are not saying that they should not have access to it. Of course, they should, because legal recognition is important. Of course, the current GRA should be reformed, because it is too slow, cumbersome, it demands things that are not in line with international human rights, but it is almost going from one extreme to another. This is what this is about. Emma, are you finished? If I can ask a follow-up, I would appreciate it. Can I just pick up there? Would it not be right to infer from your suspicion that making this process easier would result in more people making use of it, that the current system needs this reform and that the reform is the right one to make? As I said, making it easier is fine as long as it takes into consideration the impact on other members of the population that have their needs. There is clear evidence that the majority of violence against women or gender-based violence comes from male. The majority of sex offenders are males and that they will use opportunities that they can get in order to exercise violence. All of us have gone through an experience, given the prevalence of it, of either being exposed to sexual harassment or violence, even in spaces that we thought were safe, because an opportunity presented itself, because the safeguarding was not tight enough. Just from my personal experience, when I was in my 20s, I woke up from a full-body surgery to find a male nurse growing my boobs, and it was a really horrific experience. Also, I did not report it because women who go through it do not report it. Again, it is understanding how, when we go through these things, what the implications are. I tell you that I will never go back to that hospital, for example. I will never go back to that hospital. I have had, since then, fear of being under anesthesia. It is coming back to the evidence. It is one case of violence because of the lack of safeguards that are not good enough. This is a question that I would ask about prisons. We know that there have been incidents of rape and violence by trans women placed in female prison wards. Has anyone done a study to ask female prisoners how they felt about having trans women in their spaces? In some places, it probably worked really well with some inmates and others it did not. There is no evidence because we did not ask the women. Nobody is inquiring from the women. However, we have anecdotal evidence that these cases exist and that they are coming back to the guidance. When I asked Mrs Shawna about this, she said that prison authorities have their own SOPs for taking decisions on who they move into a prison. I would argue that that is not good enough. It leaves it very much to an ad hoc decision for prison authorities to make important decisions, but on an ad hoc basis. They will sometimes make good decisions, but they will also make bad decisions. I am a non-member of the committee. I recognise the amount of work that the committee has done over at least a dozen sessions of this in a hefty stage 2 debate. You mentioned earlier that you believe that this is being rushed. The bill has been six years in the making, two full-scale public consultations, and the committee has had so many evidence sessions and produced a very thorough report. How much more would have had to be done for you to consider the bill not rushed through? Again, it is really not my place to comment on that, but I would say that after six years there is still this level of polarization and very strong feelings about it and also feelings of exclusion of their points of view. I think that this is a reasonably good sign that there is still work that needs to be done. Maybe it has to do with how suggestions are taking into consideration and how certain proposals are being addressed, but I think that you would agree that there is still very strong opinions about it. Of course, there were also discussions in other countries. It is a question for the Scottish constituencies, but I know from surveys that have been carried out also recently for the Labour constituency that it seems that two-thirds are opposed to the bill. If that is any indication to go by, there is still work to be done. Okay, thanks very much for that. A huge thanks, Rhyn, for taking the time out. I apologise for keeping you waiting a little bit and apologies for staying in the session, but that is a really great hand. Thanks very much, everyone. The meeting is now ended.