On 3 October 2025, Michael O’Flaherty, Commissioner for Human Rights at the Council of Europe, addressed a letter to the UK Parliament expressing concern over the Supreme Court’s recent ruling and what he described as the “current climate for trans people in the UK.”
As one of the main drafters of the Yogyakarta Principles, a non-legal activist document that seeks to erase sex as a category in law and policy, O’Flaherty has long blurred the boundaries between human rights and ideological advocacy. His intervention now appears less as a defence of rights than as political pressure on independent courts and legislators. The UK Supreme Court ruling reaffirms basic legal clarity and women’s sex-based rights. Attempts to undermine such rulings through moral panic and behind-the-scenes lobbying mark a worrying misuse of institutional power.
Mr O’Flaherty’s letter reads less like a defence of human rights and more like a political intervention. He uses the authority of his office to promote transactivist narratives that have no legal basis. Rather than addressing the real hostility faced by women defending their rights, O’Flaherty misrepresents judicial decisions and democratic debate as threats to human rights.
Faika El-Nagashi, Director Athena Forum
We remind the Commissioner that the “current climate” in the UK includes the recent attack on Europe’s largest women’s rights conference, FiLiA, which was vandalised by trans activists, requiring police protection for female attendees. The incident was the latest in a long series of attacks, threats and intimidation targeting women’s rights advocates across Europe.
The Council of Europe must uphold genuine human rights principles – equality before the law, the protection of women and girls, the safeguarding of democratic institutions from ideological capture – and its Commissioner must stay within his mandate.
Read our full statement here: