Beijing Women's Federation

The 70th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women concluded on March 19, 2026. In her closing remarks, Sima Bahous, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, emphasized that although the headwinds against gender equality and women’s rights remain strong, our shared resolve to advance women’s rights is stronger. The Agreed Conclusions adopted at the session on the priority theme set out a concrete and clear action plan and practical pathways for implementing the Beijing Declaration, the Platform for Action, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and for ensuring access to justice for women and girls.

The 70th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women concluded on March 19, 2026. The meeting was attended by 190 Member States, including two heads of state or government, one vice president, five deputy prime ministers, and 75 ministers. In her closing remarks, Sima Bahous, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, emphasized that although the headwinds against gender equality and women’s rights remain strong, our shared resolve to advance women’s rights is stronger.

The session adopted the Agreed Conclusions on the priority theme “Ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls, including by promoting inclusive and equitable legal systems, eliminating discriminatory laws, policies and practices, and addressing structural barriers.” The Agreed Conclusions set out a concrete and clear action plan and practical pathways for implementing the Beijing Declaration, the Platform for Action, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and for ensuring access to justice for women and girls.

The importance of ensuring access to justice for women and girls

In 1995, the Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women of the United Nations urged countries to eliminate gender bias in the judicial field, provide channels for women who have suffered violence to file complaints, and enable them to bring claims to judicial authorities in accordance with the law and obtain fair and effective remedies under national laws. Ensuring women’s equal and non-discriminatory rights under the law, as well as equal access to justice, is an important obligation of all UN member states.

It is crucial to ensure access to justice for women and girls. Access to justice refers to the opportunity and ability for individuals or groups to protect their rights and obtain legal remedies through safe, affordable, understandable, convenient, and high-quality means, using fair and effective judicial or dispute resolution mechanisms. Ensuring access to justice for women and girls is, in essence, about enabling every woman—regardless of her location or circumstances—to obtain legal protection and judicial remedies equally, safely, and with dignity. UN Women’s 2011–2012 Progress of the World’s Women 2011-2012: In Pursuit of Justice notes that well-functioning legal and judicial systems are essential for protecting women’s rights and achieving gender equality, as they promote accountability, prevent abuses of power, and support the development of new laws and norms. In 2015, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women adopted General Recommendation No. 33 on women’s access to justice, which clearly defines women’s right of access to justice as a basic element of the rule of law and good governance, including justiciability, availability, accessibility, good quality, provision of remedies for victims, and accountability of justice systems. Access to justice is key to ensuring that women can enter and use the judicial system without obstacles and with dignity, with the core being the elimination of gender discrimination at both structural and individual levels.

Ensuring access to justice for women and girls is an urgent priority. The world is currently facing multiple crises, including increasing income inequality, armed conflicts, climate change, economic instability, political polarization, and uneven digital transformation, all of which have intensified challenges to gender equality. Women and girls are facing increasing threats to their access to justice, and for many, judicial justice remains out of reach. Against this backdrop, it is even more important and urgent to ensure and enhance access to justice for all women and girls, including by promoting inclusive and equitable legal systems, eliminating discriminatory laws, policies, and practices, and addressing structural barriers.

Specific actions to ensure access to justice for women and girls

The Agreed Conclusions adopted at the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women reaffirm the commitment to achieving gender equality under the framework of the Platform for Action, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. They recognize these documents as the cornerstone for achieving gender equality and women’s human rights. They set out a comprehensive action plan to ensure access to justice for women and girls, covering institutional reform, social support, legal aid, technological and digital innovation, and data systems.

Judicial system reform is the fundamental pathway to ensuring access to justice for women and girls. The Agreed Conclusions propose to: a) remove legal and institutional barriers to women’s and girls’ access to justice, promote transformative legal reforms and systematic coordination, and strengthen risk prevention and capacity building; b) promote, implement, and monitor the principles of gender equality and non-discrimination across legal frameworks, policies, and practices of all relevant fields, including traditional justice systems, by eliminating all forms of discrimination and bridging gaps in legislation, policies and practices, while upholding the rule of law and ensuring equal access to justice; c) carry out comprehensive legislative review and evaluation of national legal frameworks to identify and revise provisions that discriminate against women and girls and are inconsistent with international human rights law; d) consider developing national strategies that combine legal reforms with public education campaigns, while encouraging men and boys to act as agents, beneficiaries, and strategic partners and allies of change.

Social actors are key partners in ensuring access to justice for women and girls. The Agreed Conclusions emphasize engaging with and supporting civil society organizations across generations as important partners in advancing women’s access to justice, fostering collective social efforts, and building a coordinated, whole-of-society approach to eliminating structural barriers, including racism and other forms of systemic discrimination. They also call for creating safe and enabling online and offline environments for civil society actors working to promote access to justice, providing sustained, predictable, and flexible multi-year core funding, preventing and responding to all forms of intimidation, harassment, threats, and reprisals—including the misuse of laws, violence, and discrimination—and ensuring that these actors themselves have access to justice and protection from such violations.

Legal aid is an important means of ensuring access to justice for women and girls. Providing legal aid to women and girls is an obligation of all countries; however, current government funding for legal aid is often insufficient, and in some countries it is limited to criminal matters. The Agreed Conclusions propose ensuring that all women and girls have timely access to accessible, effective, adequate, affordable or free legal aid services; providing relevant institutions and organizations with adequate and sustainable resources to enable them to provide trauma-informed, victim- and survivor-centered services to women and girls who have been subjected to sexual and gender-based violence; establishing and promoting mobile, community-based, and decentralized justice and support services, including best practices and innovative approaches such as specialized courts, mobile courts, online courts, and one-stop service centers for all women and girls dealing with cases of violence against them; and that special attention should be paid to the specific needs of rural women, low-income women, women with disabilities, migrant, and refugee women, girls, older women, and women in conflict areas.

Technology and digital innovation are effective pathways for ensuring access to justice for women and girls. They help women and girls obtain legal information, accurately connect survivors with services, and simplify reporting processes, thereby serving as important enablers of access to justice. The Agreed Conclusions propose to provide adequate and sustainable funding for judicial facilities and services, supported by universally accessible physical and digital infrastructure, as well as information and communication technologies. They also emphasize harnessing the potential of technology and promoting technological cooperation to bridge digital divides within and between countries, including the gender digital divide, enhancing the inclusiveness and affordability of access to justice, expanding opportunities for digital learning, digital literacy, and capacity building, and addressing risks and challenges associated with the use of technology.

Data collection and analysis are essential tools for ensuring access to justice for women and girls. Currently, the identification of inequalities is significantly limited by the lack of gender-disaggregated judicial data. The Agreed Conclusions emphasize investing in national statistical systems and conducting systematic data collection and gender analysis within the justice sector. This includes ensuring that data are disaggregated by income, gender, age, marital status, migration status, disability, geographic location, education level, and other characteristics relevant to national contexts, in order to establish comprehensive indicator systems. They also propose creating and expanding global and regional databases, particularly for collecting data on all forms of violence against women and girls, using indicators consistent with international law, and providing access to policymakers, researchers, and advocates to support comparison, analysis, and accountability in prevention and protection efforts.

International cooperation in ensuring access to justice for women and girls

As one of the nine functional commissions of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, the Commission on the Status of Women is a global intergovernmental body dedicated exclusively to promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women. It has played an irreplaceable and critical role as a platform for accelerating the implementation of the gender equality goals of the Beijing Declaration, the Platform for Action, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Agreed Conclusions place particular emphasis on the importance of international cooperation.

International cooperation remains the dominant paradigm for achieving global gender equality. On March 9, 2026, the Commission on the Status of Women adopted the Agreed Conclusions by a recorded vote, breaking the tradition of adopting the document by consensus. The results were 37 in favor, 1 against, and 6 abstentions. The outcome highlights growing divisions in global gender governance, while also demonstrating that the vast majority of countries continue to uphold the concept of multilateralism, support solidarity and cooperation for gender equality and women’s rights, and oppose regression. International cooperation remains the mainstream pathway to achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment.

International cooperation is a global consensus for ensuring access to justice for women and girls. The Agreed Conclusions highlight that development cooperation—including official development assistance, North-South, South-South, and triangular cooperation—along with debt sustainability, technology transfer on mutually agreed terms, capacity-building, and the exchange of experience and best practice, is essential for enabling developing countries to strengthen access to justice for all women and girls and ensure the effective implementation of laws. The document also reaffirms the leading role of the Commission on the Status of Women in the follow-up to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, emphasizes the need for a life-cycle, age-sensitive and disability-inclusive approach, and integrates gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls into national, regional, and global assessments of progress in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ensuring strong synergies between the two frameworks.

The Agreed Conclusions of the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women have established a global action plan and practical pathways to ensure access to justice for women and girls. This international consensus shows that ensuring and strengthening the rights and opportunities of all women and girls to access justice requires not only the unwavering political will and resource commitment of the international community and national governments, but also sustained and constructive international cooperation among diverse social forces. Leaving no one behind and translating the commitments to gender equality into tangible, participatory, and beneficial systems and practices requires the joint efforts of all stakeholders.