CSW70: For all women and girls who have been denied justice
Remarks by UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous at the CSW multi-stakeholder hearing on 30 January 2026 at UN Headquarters.
[As delivered.]
It is my pleasure to join you at the first multi-stakeholder hearing on the priority theme of the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70), which is “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”.
This hearing is a strong gain of the CSW revitalization resolution and the Pact for the Future. It reflects the centrality of partnership. It recognizes that our shared challenges demand shared efforts, that they demand deliberation and exchange across the broadest range of stakeholders.
We meet as the UN Charter principles of the “equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small” are being tested. Civic spaces are constrained, resources withdrawn, conflicts ramped up, and pushback on rights loud and unashamed. For too many of the world’s women, discriminatory laws remain in force, impunity reigns, and the law applies unequally or lies within reach only of the very few.
Yet, we continue to believe, and we continue to say that access to justice is fundamental, it is non-negotiable. It shapes and is shaped by societies. Justice reflects our social norms. It is the essential framework underpinning all aspects of our lives. Justice delivered means good governance, lasting peace, security, sustainable development, and social cohesion.
Today, we are far from that goal. UN Women’s data shows us just how far. Globally, women have only 64 per cent of the legal rights of men. No country has achieved full legal equality. We see this in the 54 per cent of countries that lack a consent-based legal definition of rape. The 44 per cent who have no law to support equal pay for equal work. The three-quarters that allow child marriage, which predominantly of course affects girls. And there are few more stark reflections of the denial of justice for women and girls than their treatment in conflict and crisis. The more than 676 million women and girls living within 50 kilometres of conflict have seen conflict-related sexual violence increase by 87 per cent in just two years. Justice has seemed distant, as international humanitarian and human rights law are disregarded.
Upholding international law and our rules-based UN institutions is fundamental to multilateralism’s foundation of justice and accountability, especially for women and girls around the world. That is why this CSW70 is for all women and girls who have been denied justice.
We do not lack encouragement for our efforts. We know the impact at scale that access to justice delivers. For example, since 1970, more than 600 million women have gained access to economic opportunities as a result of family law reform. Legal reforms criminalizing domestic violence and sexual harassment have improved women’s access to justice and enabled greater participation in work, in education, and in public life. Where access to justice is a reality, women and girls thrive. And where women and girls thrive, so do whole economies and their societies.
We know what the solutions are:
- Invest in justice systems that deliver for women and girls;
- Prioritize gender-responsive, survivor-centred, and trauma-informed justice services;
- Ensure the justice system has women leading at every step from lawyers to judges to police officers;
- Guarantee accessible legal aid and justice mechanisms that comply with international human rights standards; and
- Invest in the women’s movement that works relentlessly in the pursuit of rights, legal reform, and access to justice.
Women’s rights organizations connect the global to the local. They challenge discriminatory norms, they use strategic litigation to drive systematic accountability, and they change and impact lives of women and girls daily. Yet, today when we need them most, they are least supported, and most undermined.
CSW70 is a crucial opportunity to commit to, to invest in, and to scale up the solutions I have mentioned—and I am sure you have many more solutions that you would like to discuss today—to advance transformative legal reform, strengthen coordination, and prioritize prevention. So that justice systems serve justice to women and girls. It is an opportunity to, once and for all, secure the necessary resources for justice as the public good that it is. An opportunity to harness technologies like digital justice systems and to strengthen data and evidence. It is a moment to support, politically and financially, the women’s rights organizations that remain on the frontline of the pursuit and the delivery of justice.
CSW70 is a unique space to come together in partnership. A space to combine the energies and capabilities of Member States, civil society, the private sector, and the UN system for justice for all women and girls. UN Women stands ready to play its convening role in support of that.
CSW has been and remains a beacon of multilateralism. It gathers boundless multi-stakeholder energy, creativity, commitment, and passion for our shared feminist agenda, like those that I am seeing here today and in many, many of the meetings of the multi-stakeholders of this agenda. I am confident it will do so once again this year. We can move the needle on access to justice and more. There is no pushback stronger than our collective efforts, no regression more powerful than our movement’s momentum.
I look forward to celebrating the feminist voices as the forefront of justice as we commemorate International Women’s Day this March under the theme, “Rights. Justice. Action. For all women and girls.”
I look forward to our continued discussion, to the success of CSW70, and to our steadfast partnership for all women and girls. And I thank you for being here this morning.
