The Advocates for Human Rights: 30 Years After the Beijing Conference on Women, the Work Continues

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Excerpt from The Advocates’ blog: 

The Political Declaration adopted by the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) this March delivers a sobering truth: no country in the world has fully achieved gender equality or the empowerment of women and girls. Every five years at the CSW, the international community gathers to assess the lived realities of millions of women and girls and adopt a Political Declaration that sets shared goals and renews global urgency for lasting gender equality.

The 2025 Political Declaration was adopted in the midst of deeply polarized negotiations, with several states, including Argentina, Nigeria, Russia, and the United States, seeking to undermine long-standing language on gender and gender equality. Within this context, the fact that the Declaration was adopted at all signals a degree of resilience in the face of rising global backlash.

The Advocates for Human Rights welcomes the Declaration’s recognition of areas that require further attention, including technology-facilitated gender-based violence, the burden of unpaid care work on women, the impact of armed conflict on women and girls, and the importance of engaging young women as well as men and boys in achieving gender equality.

Yet the Declaration leaves much to be addressed.

The Declaration fails to mention sexual and reproductive health and rights, a critical omission given the growing attacks on these rights globally. For example, the UNFPA has found that there are 58 countries where at least one in four women still cannot make their own decisions about their sexual and reproductive health. Despite this reality, the Declaration overlooks access to abortion, contraception, family planning, comprehensive sexuality education, and the recognition of same-sex marriages and adoptions.

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Did You Attend the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women’s Rights?

2025 marks the 30th anniversary of the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. The Advocates is collecting oral histories from women who attended this conference and want to share their experiences, hopes, and thoughts. We will be recording these interviews as video and podcast features in 2025.

>> If you attended the 1995 Beijing conference and want to share your experiences, please email rpark@advrights.org