Not such great news this year...
“As the world navigates democratic backsliding, rising conflicts, economic pressures and shrinking of civic space, there is an increasingly organised pushback at gender equality and regression of women's rights,” Sarah Hendriks, UN Women director, policy, programme and intergovernmental division told reporters at a briefing in New York this week, on Wednesday.
The report is titled Ensuring and Strengthening Access to Justice for All Women and Girls, and shows that laws are being reshaped worldwide to "restrict women’s freedoms, silence their voices, and allow abuse without consequence."
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Sarah Hendriks, UN Women Director of the Policy, Programme and Intergovernmental Support Division, briefs reporters on the global launch of the UN Secretary-General's report, "Ensuring and Strengthening Access to Justice for All Women and Girls," ahead of International Women's Day 2026 (source: UN Women). |
It also warns that women and girls are being failed by the very systems meant to protect them, leaving them exposed to abuse, injustice and impunity as backlash against gender equality intensifies.
“Justice systems do not stand apart from those pressures, they actually reflect them,” Hendriks said, as shared in UN Women's press statement.
Lack of justice and accountability
Five key areas seem to prevent fairness in outcomes for women and girls, according to the report. They thus face greater barriers to justice than men in nearly 70 per cent of the countries surveyed.
These areas are discriminatory legal frameworks, social norms, gaps between laws and implementation, traditional justice systems independent from the state, and conflicts. All serve "to reinforce inequalities and prevent advancing meaningful justice for women."
Consequently, no country in the world has reached full legal equality for women and girls, UN Women reports.
"From protection against gender-based violence to equal pay, women and girls remain unequal under the law, as impunity for violations of their rights persists worldwide," UN Women added in their press release.
This is because justice systems meant to uphold rights and the rule of law are failing women and girls everywhere.
"Women globally hold just 64 percent of the legal rights of men, exposing them to discrimination, violence, and exclusion at every stage of their lives," the UN agency reports.
More conflicts, less rights
The report shows that, in 2024, 676 million women and girls were living within 50 kilometres of a deadly conflict, which is the highest number recorded since the 1990s.
The increased scale of conflict has led to increased levels of unmet justice needs, it reads. The proliferation of conflicts has also been accompanied by a shocking disregard for international humanitarian law and international human rights law.
The United Nations also documented an increase by 87 percent of the number of conflict-related sexual violence violations, in just two years.
Independent human rights experts call for more attention to grave violations of international law.
"There is an urgent need to uphold international legal obligations, including by complying with the provisional orders and determinations of the International Court of Justice, and to prevent and punish crimes, especially those that disproportionately target women and girls."
UN recommendations
The UN Women report tries to raise room for improvement as well.
It points out ways to fight women's and girls' disempowerment.
"Ensuring that women and girls can exercise their right to equal access to justice requires political will and implementing a comprehensive set of gender-responsive actions," it reads.
It reminds us of existing mechanisms to do so, such as the “Beijing+30 Action Agenda: for all women and girls”, designed to fulfil the vision of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and accelerate the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Governments at all levels and other relevant stakeholders should also take urgent actions to strengthen access to justice for all women and girls by 2030, such as institutional change in justice systems, the respect of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, effective implementation of protective laws when they exits, adoption of news laws, reinforcement of prevention measures and allocations of funds for women's rights.
“Justice systems can evolve, they can transform,” UN Women noted, adding that since 1970 more than 600 million women have gained access to economic opportunities because of family law reform.
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