Equipop participated in the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, held from March 10 to 21 at the UN. This year marked the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action (Beijing+30), a roadmap for advancing gender equality and women's rights around the world. On this occasion, and in a climate of rising fascism with serious consequences for the content of the debates, a political declaration was adopted by the member states at the opening of the commission.
The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) opened on March 10, 2025, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action by United Nations (UN) member states. This historic document is still considered by many states and civil society organizations (CSOs) to be the UN's most progressive roadmap on women's rights and gender equality issues internationally. It identifies 12 areas for action and a set of recommendations for states to advance gender equality at the national and international levels. This year, the CSW provided an opportunity to take stock of this progress and make new political commitments to continue implementing the Beijing Platform. In his opening speech, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned states that the "poison" of patriarchy is undermining women's rights, particularly sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). He lamented the growing pressure on civil society, the alarming decline in funding for feminist organizations, and the lack of political will on the part of states to make real progress on the rights of women and LGBTQIA+ people. It was in this context that, during the opening session, CSW member states adopted a political declaration after several weeks of difficult negotiations due to the increased presence of conservative states such as the United States and Argentina. While it was symbolically important for states to agree on a text for Beijing+30, the search for compromise to achieve adoption by consensus was unfortunately at the expense of SRHR. Having played a technical support role in the negotiations, it was essential that Equipop and its feminist allies participate in the CSW and mobilize in the face of the reactionary offensive in multilateral spaces, which is blatantly evident in the Trump administration.
A geopolitical context hostile to women's rights and gender equality for Beijing+30
UN member states gathered in New York in a geopolitical climate particularly hostile to international solidarity and gender equality, two months after Donald Trump's inauguration and the various executive orders that attacked, in turn, official development assistance, the climate, the fight against HIV, and the rights of women and LGBTQIA+ people. The new US administration is attacking "gender ideology" in favor of "biological truth,", having removed all references to the word gender from the official websites of various government agencies. This rhetoric reduces women to their bodies and reproductive functions, and is illustrated by all the transphobic measures put in place by the government. Donald Trump has also reinstated the United States to the "Geneva Consensus Declaration," a text with no legal value, but which reaffirms the signatory states' opposition to abortion rights. The US anti-rights offensive comes at a time when countries around the world, particularly in Europe (France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, Germany, etc.), have decided to make massive cuts to their official development assistance (ODA) budgets. These cuts are having an unprecedented impact on the funding of multilateral organizations, the work of feminist organizations, and more broadly on gender equality. This context has permeated the content of the negotiations on the text of the political declaration, as well as the statements made in plenary, where the United States, which is not a member of the CSW, took an ultra-conservative stance alongside Javier Milei's Argentina, the Vatican, Russia, and several West African states. In all their interventions, the United States opposed the use of the word "gender," even in the expression "gender equality," which is established in the English language. During the high-level segment of the CSW, they also sponsored and co-organized an official event with two US-based anti-rights organizations on "the attack of gender ideology on women and the family." The most conservative states also tried to introduce ambiguous provisions on "women and the family": the family was considered "the basic unit of society," and the wording limited women's roles to that of mothers in the home, without recognizing the disproportionate mental burden placed on them in relation to domestic tasks, or the violence that can exist within the family unit.
Sexual and reproductive rights and health excluded from CSW69
The political declaration adopted at the end of these negotiations on the first day of the commission has made some progress since the last one adopted in 2020. This text is not binding in the same way as a treaty, but it still commits the international community. For example, it recognizes the need to combat gender-based and sexual violence (GBV), both online and offline, particularly in times of conflict, which is a considerable advance given that this issue is regularly raised as a red line by countries such as Russia. The issue of flexible, sustainable, and long-term funding for civil society is recognized as critical to achieving gender equality. The declaration also reiterates the need for states to honor their ODA commitments. Strong language has been included on the theme of health, including mental health, menstrual health, and universal health coverage. However, SRHRs are not mentioned at all in the text, even though their protection and promotion are essential to the full realization of women's human rights and gender equality. The paragraph on education does not include comprehensive sexuality education, which is crucial in preventing VAW and combating HIV. There is also no mention of the human rights of LGBTQIA+ people, even though the declaration recognizes the existence of multiple and intersectional forms of discrimination that affect women and girls. Despite the declaration being adopted by consensus, on the last day of the CSW some states expressed their opposition to many of its provisions. The United States opened the floor by opposing references to "the right to development," "climate change," "gender," and more broadly, the 2030 Agenda framework. Argentina, Russia, and Burkina Faso refused to recognize the terms "multiple and intersectional forms of discrimination" and emphasized that they interpreted the term "gender" solely through a binary and biological female/male lens. Russia also opposed the concept of human rights in general. However, countries such as Canada (on behalf of the "Mountains" coalition of states), Chile (on behalf of the LATAM coalition of states), Poland (on behalf of the EU), Brazil, and Tunisia welcomed the adoption of the declaration. Only the South American states explicitly regretted the absence of SRHR from the text.
The voice of civil society as a bulwark against conservatism
Faced with the virulence of anti-rights activists, civil society mobilized during the two weeks of committee meetings through a large number of events in which Equipop participated. SRHRs were placed back at the heart of the discussions, and the issue of the rise of fascism was particularly prominent. Feminist associations such as AWID, Outright International, the Institute for Journalism and Social Change, and Planned Parenthood acted as whistleblowers, emphasizing the links between anti-gender rhetoric, Big Tech, and authoritarianism, and creating spaces to develop collective strategies to address these issues. CSOs denounced a lack of political will in the face of anti-rights attacks, even though feminist movements are sorely lacking in the financial resources they need to do their work. They also denounced the insidious erasure of the most progressive discourse at major international conferences, pointing out that the conferences on women's rights in Mexico City, Nairobi, and Beijing went much further on issues of intersectionality and decolonialism. The CSW was also an opportunity for Equipop and its partners in the Walking the Talk to present its Common Framework of Demands for the funding of feminist movements to activists from around the world. We also took advantage of the presence in New York of a large number of feminist activists, donors, and institutional actors to organize the launch event for the Francophone Feminist Alliance, led in consortium with the FIDH and the FFMed. We facilitated meetings between the Alliance's partner activists and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as the delegation of parliamentarians present in New Yorkto discuss the importance of funding gender equality and feminist organizations, as France officially launched its "feminist diplomacy" strategy a few days before the CSW. We also met with European Commissioner for Equality Hadja Lhabib, the day after the release of the European Union's roadmap for women's rights.
International mobilization for feminist foreign policies
Thanks to Equipop's work analyzing and amending the text with the Countdown 2030 Europe, and strategic discussions with France's permanent representation to the United Nations, Equipop supported France throughout the negotiations on the political declaration. The association is determined to continue this dialogue, which is more essential than ever as we approach the UN Conference on Financing for Development and the Summit for Feminist Foreign Policies organized by France in 2025. In its statement on behalf of the group of states pursuing feminist foreign policies, France reiterated that we must continue to defend multilateralism in the face of conservative voices, bring gender equality and women's rights to the forefront of the international stage, and provide substantial funding to feminist organizations and movements in the face of backlash. France must uphold these commitments in the name of its feminist diplomacy. To do so, it must ensure consistency between its international rhetoric and the government's funding policies, and ensure that the drastic cuts to its ODA do not have a disproportionate impact on the funding of feminist organizations supported in particular by the FSOFmechanism. We will continue to mobilize in this direction in the coming months alongside French parliamentarians. CSW69 raised an urgent issue: politicians must heed the warnings of feminist organizationsand understand that attacks on women's rights and gender equality go hand in hand with the rise of authoritarianism and fascism. Now more than ever, action is needed.
