March 8 marks International Women’s Day. It is a day when women receive flowers, chocolates and cards. However, women deserve more than that. They deserve rights. They deserve equality. They deserve empowerment. And they should not settle for less than that. In 2025, the United Nations made the theme “For ALL Women and Girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment” the cornerstone of its International Women’s Day celebration, calling for action that can unlock equal rights, power and opportunities for all and a feminist future where no one is left behind. As emphasized by the UN, “Central to this vision is empowering the next generation—youth, particularly young women and adolescent girls—as catalysts for lasting change.”
The year 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the most progressive and widely endorsed blueprint for women’s and girls’ rights worldwide. The Beijing Declaration is credited with transforming the women’s rights agenda, whether in terms of legal protection, access to services, youth engagement, and change in social norms, stereotypes and ideas stuck in the past. Recent years have seen important progress, including:
- 89% of governments identified ending violence against women as their top priority, and 193 countries have legal measures against it.
- Most of the world has reached parity in education.
- 112 countries have a national plan to engage women in peace and security processes – a significant increase from 19 countries in 2010.
However, in 2025, the situation of women and girls globally is still far from where it should be. The most extreme example of this is the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan. The last three years have seen the Taliban placing restrictions on all aspects of women’s and girls’ lives in Afghanistan. From education to employment. From movement to participation in everyday activities. Whenever the international community thinks that it could not get any worse for women in Afghanistan, the Taliban keeps coming up with new ways to impose more restrictions on women and girls – until women and girls are erased from society completely. Afghan women, international experts, and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, called for the recognition of the treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan as gender apartheid – to comprehensively capture the Taliban system of governance enforcing systematic segregation and exclusion of women and girls.
In 2025, women’s bodies continue to be used to wage wars, with conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) being used across all recent conflicts and situations of atrocity crimes.
In 2025, as Rwandan-backed M23 has been ravaging through eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, sexual violence became a common weapon against women, girls, and whole communities.
In 2025, in Sudan, reports of CRSV continue to emerge, and ever since the fighting erupted in Khartoum and Merowe in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces.
In 2025, in Ethiopia, despite the Cessation of Hostilities agreement that ended fighting in the Tigray region, reports of sexual violence persist.
In Nigeria, sexual violence, as perpetrated by non-state actors such as Boko Haram and others, continues to be a major protection concern for women and girls in north-east Nigeria in the context of protracted conflict and gender inequality.
In 2025, femicide continues to be perpetrated in all parts of the world, with one woman or girl killed every 10 minutes or 140 women and girls every single day.
The list goes on.
Women and girls in too many countries still wait for rights, equality and empowerment. But they do not wait in silence. They continue fighting.
We, as the international community, must join them in the fight to ensure that the very rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and every subsequent treaty are ensured, protected and implemented in full. This is a job for all – governments, civil society, media, corporate leaders, community and religion or belief leaders, and others with influence. Change will not happen overnight. However, inaction and allowing half of the world’s population to be excluded from or limited in the enjoyment of the rights and protections of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights cannot be justified.