Access to justice for women is at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with its commitments to gender equality and to peaceful, just, and inclusive societies. This report provides a better understanding of common justice problems facing women and makes the case for increased investments in strategies that work to bring justice closer to women.

The 2007-2008 global financial crisis and subsequent austerity policies have jeopardized the realization of women’s economic and social rights. The resulting job losses, decreased social services, and increased economic insecurity have weakened the capacity of people to perform unpaid care work. In this paper, UN Women calls on States to meet their human rights obligations by taking a transformative approach to economic and social policy and designing recovery policies that promote gender equality and women’s rights.

The publication summarizes UN Women’s position paper on the post-2015 agenda, reviews key areas of the Beijing Platform for Action and summarizes the Consensus adopted at the two previous editions of the Regional Conference on Women which focused on gender equality, women’s empowerment and information and communications technologies.

In the midst of a global conversation about the legacy and next steps after the MDGs, UN Women calls for a commitment to achieving gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment in the post-2015 development framework and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To make a difference, the new framework must be transformative, by addressing the structural impediments to gender equality and the achievement of women’s rights.

The adoption and implementation of multi-sectoral national plans of action to address violence against women is one of the five key outcomes which the Secretary-General's campaign “UNiTE to end violence against women aims to achieve in all countries by 2015.