The UN Secretary-General issued a report on ‘Ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls, including by promoting inclusive and equitable legal systems, eliminating discriminatory laws, policies and practices, and addressing structural barriers.’ The report highlights progress, obstacles, and the arrangements needed to advance the full and effective implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and gender-responsive implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Issued ahead of the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70), the report (E/CN.6/2026/3) focuses on CSW70’s priority theme. It underscores the importance of ensuring access to justice for women and girls amid widening income inequality, growing conflict, the erosion of democratic norms, “pervasive pushback on women’s rights,” climate change, and uneven digital transformation.

In 2024, the report notes, countries reported ensuring women’s equality and non-discrimination under the law and access to justice as one of their top priorities in the preceding five years, with around 90% reporting that they had strengthened laws, implementation, and enforcement measures to combat violence against women. In addition, in the past decade, over 40 countries have amended their constitutions to incorporate provisions aimed at advancing women and girls’ rights.

However, the report flags, women globally face greater barriers to justice than men in nearly 70% of the countries surveyed. Globally, women have 64% of the legal rights of men, 54% of countries lack consent-based legal definitions of rape, 72% allow child marriage, more than 45 countries have at least one provision in their legislation regarding nationality that discriminates on the basis of gender, and 44% of countries do not have legislation mandating equal remuneration for work of equal value.

The report provides an overview of legal frameworks, structural barriers and social norms, implementation gaps, traditional justice systems, and crisis, conflict, and post-conflict settings that affect women and girls’ access to justice.

The report offers recommendations for governments to strengthen access to justice for all women and girls by 2030, by focusing on transformative law reform, prevention, and transitional justice mechanisms. It calls for better coordination and funding and for leveraging autonomous feminist movements and civil society, legal aid and legal empowerment, technology and digital innovation, and data and research to enable such access.

CSW is one of the UN Economic and Social Council’s (ECOSOC) Functional Commissions. CSW70 is meeting in New York, US, from 9-19 March 2026. [Publication: Ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls, including by promoting inclusive and equitable legal systems, eliminating discriminatory laws, policies and practices, and addressing structural barriers: Report of the Secretary-General] [UN Women Press Release]