Ms. Sima Bahous, UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director, delivered the opening speech at the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, 10 March 2025, UN headquarters in New York. Ms Bahous was reporting on an analysis of the progress reports of 159 countries against the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, 30 years since this a bold vision and game-changing roadmap for equality, development and peace for all women everywhere was agreed.
BPW International was there, standing with our sister organisations and the women of the world, ready to March Forward.
In her speech, Ms. Bahous told us there is progress to celebrate, earned through the efforts, bravery and inspiration of those who have fought the fight for equality. Here is some of what she said.
We, you, the champions of gender equality, are not afraid of the pushback. We have faced it before. We have not backed down. And we will not back down. 2025 must be a turning point to push forward for rights, equality, and empowerment, for all women and girls.
We need, and women and girls expect and deserve, acceleration, redoubled effort, and an overdue recognition that what has been done does not suffice, what is being done is not enough, and what must be done can no longer be deferred.
Today, more girls are in school. More women are in parliaments, in boardrooms, in the judiciary. Maternal mortality has fallen. Legal barriers have been dismantled. Policies to protect and advance women’s rights are advancing. Violence against women and girls is widely recognized as a global scourge. There is progress. You, Member States, have pushed progress.
Yet, as we meet here today, in too many places women’s rights are being rolled back. The Beijing Declaration’s noble goals, its call to the undeniable interest of all humanity, elude us still.
We see opportunity spurned, solutions foregone. We face pushback and a peak in resistance to gender equality. Misogyny is on the rise, and so, violence and discrimination. And the crises of our time—from conflict to climate change—accelerate and amplify these inequalities. Women and girls are the ones bearing the heaviest burden.
We see widening inequalities, an unravelling of hard-won progress. Women’s and girls’ voices silenced when they need to be heard loudest. Precisely when we should be investing more in an equal future, in the shining potential of women and girls, we instead invest less, and spend more on guns and bombs.
the adoption of the CSW Political Declaration will stand as a testament to what we can achieve—even in challenging times—when we come together for women and girls; when we affirm the ongoing commitment of these United Nations to equality and the role of multilateralism in its pursuit.
The Political Declaration reaffirms the commitments of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, originally adopted in 1995 at the Fourth World Conference on Women, stressing the need to uphold all human rights and fundamental freedoms for every woman and girl, without exception.
We owe a debt of gratitude to civil society and to women-led movements, whose courage and unwavering advocacy have driven transformative change. Civil society and women-led movements—you are the conscience of our global commitments, the voices urging us to do better, to be better.
In her closing remarks. Ms. Sima Bahous stated: This Commission on the Status of Women has shown that, whatever the headwinds, the United Nations is still the place where consensus can be found on gender equality. As this 69th Commission on the Status of Women closes, we share a deep recognition of the challenges and opportunities of gender equality. They have been articulated frequently, eloquently, and effectively these last two weeks—in an exceptional year.
