Our impact

Two changes impacting c3.5m women and girls

In March, prompted by high rates of sexual violence and FGM and with the support of Equality Now’s legal advisers and partners, Kisii County, a subregion in Kenya, enacted a Gender Mainstreaming Policy to strengthen and guide the Government’s role in addressing gender-based violence and advancing gender equality for its estimated 678,000 women and girls.

While in July, the Central African Republic became the 46th Member State of the African Union to ratify the Maputo Protocol, one of the most advanced treaties on the protection of women’s and girls’ rights in the world, giving CAR’s 2.8m women and girls greater legal protection for all forms of human rights violations.

One change impacting 16.9m women and girls

In March, the Malaysian Government officially published a Constitutional amendment enacted by Parliament that gives women gender equal rights to confer citizenship on a child born abroad. This law will give Malaysia’s 16.9m women and girls greater citizenship rights in line with the male population

Four changes impacting c2m women and girls

In January, Kyrgyzstan’s new Labour Code came into force, removing outdated restrictions that barred women from working in over 400 professions deemed ‘arduous’ or ‘dangerous’, promising expanded occupational choice and economic opportunity for the country’s 1.9m working-age women.

Also in Kyrgyzstan, February saw two further changes: 

An amendment to the Criminal and Criminal Procedure Codes that increases penalties for sexual violence committed against persons with disabilities. This is expected to enhance protection for an estimated 108,000 women and girls with disabilities across the country.

The adoption of a National Action Plan to implement the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s concluding observations, introducing such key commitments as a consent-based definition of rape, training for law enforcement on handling sexual violence against children, and reforms to combat child marriage. This policy is expected to strengthen protection for the estimated 183,000 girls and adolescents in Kyrgyzstan who will experience sexual violence, as well as male adolescents at risk across the country.

While in December, the Kyrgyzstan Constitutional Court ruled against a presidential initiative to reintroduce the death penalty, which was driven by public outrage over the brutal rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl. The ruling prevented the country from taking a significant backward step in building a justice system that is fair, humane, and in line with international human rights standards. And, in rejecting calls for extreme retribution over and above other potential measures, leaves the door open to addressing the root causes of sexual violence.

Two changes impacting c1.5m women and girls

In August, the Government of Bolivia enacted a legal reform eliminating all exceptions to child marriage law, increasing protection for the approximately 441,000 girls and adolescents determined to be at risk under the prior law. 

In the same month, Oaxaca in Mexico reformed its Criminal Code to introduce a consent-based definition of sexual offences and to strengthen provisions involving crimes against adolescents – changes that are expected to strengthen protection and improve access to justice across the state for the estimated 1.1m women and girls at risk from sexual violence.

Two changes impacting 3.6m women and girls

In February, Iraq adopted amendments to its 1959 Personal Status Law introducing a separate Jaafari Personal Status Code for Shi’a communities. Advocacy by Equality Now and partners, including the Hurra Coalition and ASUDA, contributed to retaining the legal minimum age of marriage at 18 within the new framework, preventing proposals that could have allowed marriage at significantly younger ages (although judicial exceptions from age 15 are still allowed). This aspect of the reform is expected to help preserve existing protections against child marriage for an estimated 1.7m Shi’a girls in Iraq at risk from this practice.

In May, Kuwait repealed a provision of its Penal Code, Art. 182, that previously allowed ‘kidnappers’, including perpetrators of sexual violence, to escape prosecution by marrying their victims. This reform removes a deeply harmful legal provision that enabled impunity and reinforced stigma, coercion, and injustice for survivors. The change is expected to strengthen legal protections for all 1.9m women and girls in Kuwait.

Six changes impacting 42m+ women and girls

Our work to eradicate exceptions to child marriage laws across all US states continued, with 2025 seeing reforms in Maine, Oregon, Washington DC, and Missouri, reducing the number of states with child marriage exemptions from 37 to 34.

Meanwhile, in April, the Washington DC Female Genital Mutilation Prohibition Act came into effect, comprehensively banning FGM and strengthening legal protections for women and girls in the District.

And May saw the passage of the Take It Down Act in the US, a new federal law requiring tech companies to remove intimate content, including AI-generated deepfakes, within 48 hours of notification.