After the G7, countries must break their silence and speak out loud and clear in defense of women’s rights and gender equality at the United Nations General Assembly.
Starting September 8, United Nations member states will gather in New York for the 81st session of the General Assembly. This annual meeting comes at a pivotal moment. Around the world, the rights of girls, adolescent girls, women, and LGBTQIA+ people are under unprecedented attack, driven in particular by pressure from masculinist, far-right, and populist movements. The very principle of gender equality is under widespread attack, despite the adoption of feminist diplomacy by several states.
This setback is neither spontaneous nor isolated. It is the result of an organized, coordinated, and heavily funded political offensive against gender equality, international human rights standards, and multilateralism itself. This backlash is affecting international negotiations, budgetary priorities, and policy decisions, including within the UN.
In light of these setbacks, Women 7 and the coalitions that signed this op-ed are issuing a call: the United Nations General Assembly must not repeat the failures seen at the G7. It must be the forum where states openly protect and promote international commitments to gender equality.
The G7's Backtracking: A Wake-Up Call
The conclusions of the G7 summit in Évian are an illustration of this backlash. Of the nine documents adopted, only two mention the rights of women and girls. Sexual and reproductive rights, economic gender justice, food security, girls’ access to education, and the gendered impact of climate change were ignored and omitted from the declarations, even though these issues are essential to development and a peaceful world.
Giving in to states that are openly anti-rights and anti-choice—against a backdrop of a shrinking civic space and a drastic cut in funding for feminist organizations—amounts to endorsing the setbacks unfolding before our very eyes.
The Evian Summit is over; silence is no longer an option
The G7 is a forum that has always been subject to scrutiny. This year’s lineup was all the more complex, split between states that fuel the backlash, others that turn a blind eye, and still others that demonstrate a willingness to combat it. Now that the summit is over, we must pick ourselves up and redouble our efforts to defend women’s rights and gender equality in other multilateral forums. The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) is the largest UN gathering. It offers an opportunity to seek allies and marginalize the most reactionary states. This is a decisive moment in the multilateral arena and the time for states to affirm their support for feminist organizations, which are fighting against the rollback of rights and against gender-based violence.
The UN80 Initiative: A Reform That Could Weaken the Rights It Claims to Protect
This year, the UN General Assembly is taking place under unusual circumstances. Due to drastic cuts in official development assistance worldwide and the withdrawal of certain member states, the United Nations has embarked on a major process of internal restructuring and reform, known as UN80. At first glance, this announcement is positive: at last, member states are recognizing the need for reform. But some areas remain unclear. Feminist organizations, which were not consulted, are sounding the alarm about the proposed merger of two United Nations agencies: the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which specializes in sexual and reproductive health and rights, and UN Women, which is responsible for gender equality. If poorly planned, this merger could have serious consequences: disruption or elimination of programs; a decline in both the quantity and quality of initiatives carried out; dilution of the two mandates; and, ultimately, a reduction in funding allocated to both sexual and reproductive health and gender equality. In practical terms, this risks causing disruptions in essential health care services and undermining access to contraception, abortion, violence prevention, and the fight against HIV/AIDS. For feminist organizations, it is precisely when rights are under attack that we must strengthen the institutions that defend them.
The future of multilateralism must be built in partnership with feminist organizations
At the current rate, according to UN Women estimates, it would take another 300 years to achieve gender equality. Our societies can no longer wait. The thousands of organizations that have signed this op-ed call on the nations gathered in New York in September for the 81st General Assembly to explicitly recognize that the backlash—this systematic attack on the rights of women, girls, and LGBTQIA+ people—is a threat to human rights, democracies, and multilateralism.
The ongoing restructuring at the United Nations also raises a deeper question: what model of multilateralism do we want to adopt? For our feminist coalitions, the approach is clear: a resolutely egalitarian, anti-colonial, and anti-racist model that benefits all people and the planet. We want a strong form of multilateralism that firmly opposes backlash, combats climate change and injustice everywhere, mobilizes in the face of crises, and does not resign itself to conflict. A multilateralism that exposes and addresses structural and systemic inequalities through egalitarian global governance and a renewed financial commitment by states to policies of international solidarity and gender equality. A renewed multilateralism that recognizes the importance of civil society organizations as a bulwark of democracy and that guarantees and facilitates their full participation in its decision-making bodies.
Signatories
- Women 7 (W7)is a coalition of more than 260 feminist organizations from 62 countries, coordinated by Equipop, CARE France, the Fund for Women in the Mediterranean, Le Planning Familial, and Plan International France.
- The Women’s Rights Caucus (WRC) isa global, intersectional,
feminist coalition bringing together more than 800 organizations, networks, and individuals, convened by Fòs Feminista, Outright International, the African Women’s Development and Communications Network (FEMNET), the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), and the Young Feminist Caucus, which advocates for gender equality at the UN.
- Since 2025, theFeminist Cross-Coalition UN80 Working Grouphas brought together more than 1,000 organizations worldwide that are working to protect gender equality within the UN as part of the UN80 reform process.
- TheWomen’s Major Group (WMG) isa global network of more than 2,000 feminist and women’s rights organizations working to advance gender, economic, social, and environmental justice within the United Nations’ sustainable development processes.
- The Francophone Feminist Allianceis a collective initiative aimed at strengthening
the participation and influence of Francophone feminists in multilateral forums
. Through networking among feminist activists and movements and collective advocacy in institutional forums, the Alliance helps raise the profile of and organize feminist advocacy in support of gender equality.
