Women’s rights NGO Equality Now reported on Friday that despite some progress towards legal equality, there has been an “alarming rollback” of fundamental human rights relating to “women’s rights, LGBTQ+ protections, and democratic freedoms” thirty years after the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was adopted.
According to Equality Now, important protections for democratic freedoms, gender equality, and marginalized communities are currently being threatened by a worldwide trend where legal systems are being used to “perpetuate inequality, uphold patriarchal control, and undermine the rule of law.” The attacks on reproductive rights and legal discrimination against women and sexual minorities are what the group described as “a widespread and coordinated backlash against human rights.”
The report also argued that many of these actions violate international laws and standards, in addition to the commitments outlined in the Beijing Declaration. Specifically, it claims that the repression against reproductive rights, such as abortion restrictions in Poland and Latin America, alongside those in the US following the overrule of Roe v. Wade, violates the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women(CEDAW). Specifically, Article 16(e) of the treaty guarantees “the same rights to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children and to have access to the information, education and means to enable them to exercise these rights” for men and women.
Furthermore, the NGO claimed that legal discrimination against LGBTQ+ communities, including “anti-propaganda” legislation in Russia, Uganda’s use of life imprisonment and death penalty against same-sex relationships, and US restrictions on gender-affirming care and censorship
directly contradicts international legal commitments and the principles outlined in the Beijing Platform. Some of these actions also violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). For example, ICCPR Article 6 outlines that the death penalty may only be used “for the most serious crimes,” while Article 26 guarantees equal protection of the law to all persons, including “effective protection against discrimination on any ground such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” The group added:
We are at a crossroads. Either the world takes a stand against the rollback on women’s rights, or we risk losing decades of progress. The Beijing Platform for Action set the global agenda for gender equality—but it is only as strong as the political will to uphold it. The Beijing+30 edition of Words & Deeds is more than a report—it is a Call to Action for everyone to do their part to ensure legal equality everywhere.
In September 1995, 189 countries unanimously adopted the Beijing Declaration during the Fourth World Conference on Women. The document outlined common objectives to expand women’s rights and gender equality.