Blog by Marie Christine Gries, SI Representative to UNESCO, Paris.
On 6 March 2025, SI Representative to UNESCO, Marie Christine Gries, attended a symposium entitled ‘Beijing +30: Women’s rights at risk’ in the lead up to International Women’s Day. In this blog, Marie Christine covers some of the key points discussed in this session organised by the French National Commission for UNESCO.
30th anniversary of the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing
Under the aegis of the UN, the Beijing Conference produced a political declaration accompanied by a program of action adopted by 189 countries, a veritable road map for achieving twelve strategic objectives relating to the status of women and girls. The state of play was exhaustive and the roadmap well-developed.
What has been achieved since 1995?
Women’s rights are increasingly proclaimed and, to a lesser extent (only a fraction) contested, however the 12 key areas of concern are still the same 30 years after 1995: poverty, women’s literacy and empowerment, the right to education for girls, health, reproductive health and control, gender-based violence, women in armed conflict, the economic role of women, the role of women in political decision-making, institutional mechanisms, human rights, the media, the environment, and gender equality in all areas!
In 30 years… It’s fair to say that the program’s overall record is poor.
Domestic violence, femicide, child, early and forced marriages and unions, and female genital mutilation persist, and the violence has increased with the COVID health crisis. Girls’ education and their right to schooling is not respected, and the impact of the health crisis has also been a large wave of children dropping out of school, especially girls who already have less schooling than boys.
Economic equality at work in the richest countries is still a long way off: equal pay, access to positions of responsibility, the invisible burden of unpaid social and domestic work…
In addition to the high hurdles to achieving the objectives set in 1995, today we have to add the impact of a world undergoing social and economic transformation with the revolution in communication technologies and artificial intelligence. The ease of access to, and lack of control over, digital social networks is having a multiplier effect on violence: sex-trafficking networks (case of the recent Mazant trial in France), insults and threats against women journalists, hate-mongering influencers, etc. The low proportion of women in the sector, particularly in programming, is leading to a multiplicity of sexist biases in the contributions made by artificial intelligence.
Is that all? No! Women’s rights regress!
In the world today, 170 conflicts are ravaging countries, half of them in Africa, with massacres and wandering refugees among whom women and children are subjected to the worst forms of violence in defiance of international rules on war crimes (rape as a weapon of war, child soldiers, girls in sexual slavery, etc.). One figure: In the two years since 2022, the percentage of women killed in armed conflicts has doubled worldwide. But when it comes to peace talks, only 16 per cent of negotiators are women, and only 33 per cent of peace agreements include provisions for women and girls. Women’s access to decision-making and political positions of responsibility is progressing very unevenly from one country to another. It is not in Africa that it is lagging furthest behind!
Supported by 75 countries, CEDAW’s General Recommendation 40 (October 2024) on the equal and inclusive representation (50 per cent) of women in decision-making processes at all levels in all areas is particularly contested. In some forty countries, particularly those that have established very authoritarian regimes in recent years, the national constitution is opposed, taking precedence over international declarations.
In Afghanistan, there is a ban on educating women and girls: they aren’t even allowed to learn to read and write! They are also denied the right to health care (which is causing an explosion in perinatal mortality among women and children). In this country, are women still considered as human beings?
We recently saw how vulnerable women are when it comes to controlling their own bodies and reproduction, with the removal of their right to terminate a pregnancy in the United States – an example that could inspire other countries.