Words & Deeds: Holding Governments Accountable in the Beijing+30 Review Process

Report summary

Thirty years after the Beijing Declaration, legal inequality persists across the world. Words & Deeds: Holding Governments Accountable in the Beijing+30 Review Process, the sixth edition in our Words & Deeds series that began in 1999, exposes that governments have failed to repeal or amend sex-discriminatory laws and highlights the urgent reforms needed to achieve full legal equality for women and girls.

What’s inside the report?

• An analysis of legal progress and setbacks since the fifth edition in 2020
• Country-specific examples of sex-discriminatory laws still in force
• Global trends in the rollback of women’s rights, including reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ protections
• Examples of the impact of legal inequality on women’s lives
• A Call to Action for governments, international bodies, and civil society on urgent legal reforms

Who’s it for?

• Government policymakers and lawmakers working on legal reforms
• UN treaty bodies and regional organizations monitoring compliance with international agreements
• Civil society organizations and activists advocating for legal equality
• Journalists and researchers covering gender equality and human rights
• Legal professionals and human rights defenders working on gender-based discrimination cases

Key takeaways and recommendations

Civil society and the media play a critical role—we hope advocates will use this report to demand and support legal reforms.

Governments must act immediately to repeal or amend sex-discriminatory laws and close legal loopholes that enable gender-based violence.

Legal equality is non-negotiable—all States must enforce constitutional protections and align national laws with the Beijing Platform for Action, CEDAW, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

International accountability must be strengthened—the UN and regional bodies must apply pressure on non-compliant governments.

All women’s and girls’ rights must be safeguarded against political and ideological rollbacks.

Please note that during the designing of this report, Saudi Arabia published the Implementing Regulations of the Personal Status Law, which update and accompany the 2022 Personal Status Law (PSL) codification mentioned in the report  below. The new regulations address provisions on marriage, divorce, custody, and male guardianship— areas identified as sex discriminatory – with some reported limited improvements. We will continue to monitor these developments and their impact on women and girls in Saudi Arabia.

Update: We welcome the Kyrgyzstan government’s adoption of the new Labor Code, which removes and amends sex-discriminatory restrictions that previously barred women from over 400 jobs. As highlighted in our report below, the previous labor code prohibited women from working in roles deemed “harmful or dangerous.” Equality Now has long advocated for eliminating all forms of sex-based discrimination in Kyrgyzstan’s labor laws and formally objected to these restrictions in 2023 before the Constitutional Court of the Kyrgyz Republic.

Read more in our press release.