JOhn,

“If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights, once and for all." - Hillary Clinton, at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, 1995.

Today, as part of the United Nations 75th General Assembly, Member States are meeting at the High-Level Meeting of the UN General Assembly on the 25th anniversary of the Beijing conference to discuss the transformative change needed to accelerate the achievement of the commitments expressed in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which must include ending sex discriminatory laws.

Progress for legal equality since 1995

There has indeed been progress in the last 25 years, and - showing that activism can really have an impact - even since we launched our Words & Deeds report this past March, Switzerland and Syria have both made changes to discriminatory laws we called out in the report:

• Switzerland amended its parental leave laws to provide 10 days paid paternity leave for men, when they had previously not had any. 
  
  
• The Permanent Mission of Syria to the United Nations has informed Equality Now that its discriminatory law which provided a much lesser penalty for “honor killings” than for murder has been repealed.

Every woman deserves to live safe, fearless and free

Meanwhile, many countries still have discriminatory laws in force, and today, when States are meeting to discuss just this issue, is a great time to remind them they’ve still got work to do. Will you take 3 minutes to call on 3 governments to change their laws today?

✅ Ask Madagascar to stop limiting women’s economic prospects and allow women to work any of the same jobs as men, even at night.

✅ Ask the Bahamas to protect women from violence by criminalizing marital rape.

✅ Ask Afghanistan to amend its discriminatory law which designates the husband as sole head of the household and requires a wife to have a husband’s permission to leave the house.

Thank you for your continued support in calling out inequality in the law around the world.

In Solidarity 

Bryna Subherwal

Advocacy Campaign Manager

PS: Want to find out what Member States are saying at today’s High-Level Meeting? You can watch the full day's discussion on UN Web TV and learn more with this op-ed from Antonia Kirkland, Equality Now’s Global Lead for Legal Equality.