Beijing+10: Words and Deeds

At the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, governments pledged to repeal all discriminatory laws. In June 2000, a Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly reviewed implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action on the occasion of its fifth anniversary, and governments pledged in the Outcome Document they adopted to review domestic legislation “with a view to striving to remove discriminatory provisions as soon as possible, preferably by 2005…” The 2005 deadline has not been met and laws that explicitly discriminate against women remain in force in many countries.

To highlight the gap between women’s realities in countries around the world and the commitments made by governments ten years ago, Equality Now has issued Words and Deeds: Holding Governments Accountable in the Beijing +10 Review Process (PDF 580K), an updated version of the Beijing+5 report published by Equality Now in 1999 in preparation for the 2000 Special Session of the General Assembly. The report highlights a representative sampling of discriminatory laws in countries around the world and calls on their governments to rescind these laws in accordance with the commitment made in the Beijing Platform for Action. See the summary of laws or interactive map for an overview of the laws highlighted in the report. For a synopsis of Equality Now's Beijing +10 report, see Unequal Under the Law.

Equality Now is calling for the creation of a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Laws that Discriminate Against Women, and has convened a coalition of non-governmental organizations around the world to support this initiative.

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