Follow-Up to the 4th World Conference on Women and Full Implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the Outcome of the 23rd Special Session of the General Assembly

A/RES/63/159No PDF available

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 56Advancement of women, published in 2009.

What other versions does this mandate have?

21 versions · 2001–2025

This is an older version — the most recent is A/RES/80/186

2025A/RES/80/186Follow-up to the 4th World Conference on Women and full implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcome of the 23rd special session of the General AssemblyLatestCompare with previous version
2023A/RES/78/182Follow-up to the 4th World Conference on Women and full implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcome of the 23rd special session of the General AssemblyCompare with previous version
2022A/RES/76/142Follow-up to the 4th World Conference on Women and full implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcome of the 23rd special session of the General AssemblyCompare with previous version
2020A/RES/74/128Follow-up to the 4th World Conference on Women and full implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcome of the 23rd special session of the General AssemblyCompare with previous version
2018A/RES/72/147Follow-up to the 4th World Conference on Women and full implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcome of the 23rd special session of the General AssemblyCompare with previous version

Versions are identified automatically by matching titles within the same organ (~97% accuracy on a manual audit).

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

1 report of the Secretary-General submitted under this mandate, 2009.

2009A/64/218Measures taken and progress achieved in follow-up to the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcome of the 23rd special session of the General Assembly report of the Secretary-General

Identified automatically from the metadata in each report’s UN Digital Library catalogue record.

What does this mandate say?

50 operative paragraphs

Takes note with appreciation of the report of the Secretary-General on the measures taken and progress achieved in follow-up to the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcome of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly;

Reaffirms the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women,1 the outcome of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly,2 and the declaration adopted on the occasion of the ten-year review and appraisal of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action at the forty-ninth session of the Commission on the Status of Women, and also reaffirms its commitment to their full, effective and accelerated implementation;

Recognizes that the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the fulfilment of the obligations of States parties under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women are mutually reinforcing in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women, and in this regard welcomes the contributions of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women to promoting the implementation of the Platform for Action and the outcome of the twenty-third special session, and invites States parties to the Convention to include information on measures taken to enhance implementation at the national level in their reports to the Committee under article 18 of the Convention;

Calls upon Governments, the United Nations system and other international and regional organizations, and all sectors of civil society, including non-governmental organizations, as well as all women and men, to fully commit themselves and to intensify their contributions to the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcome of the twenty-third special session;

Calls upon States parties to comply fully with their obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Optional Protocol thereto and to take into consideration the concluding comments as well as the general recommendations of the Committee, urges States parties to consider limiting the extent of any reservations that they lodge to the Convention, to formulate any reservations as precisely and narrowly as possible, and to regularly review such reservations with a view to withdrawing them so as to ensure that no reservation is incompatible with the object and purpose of the Convention, also urges all Member States that have not yet ratified or acceded to the Convention to consider doing so, and calls upon those Member States that have not yet done so to consider signing, ratifying or acceding to the Optional Protocol;

Encourages all actors, inter alia, Governments, the United Nations system, other international organizations and civil society, to continue to support the work of the Commission on the Status of Women in fulfilling its central role in the follow-up to and review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcome of the twenty-third special session, and, as applicable, to carry out its recommendations, and welcomes in this regard the revised programme and methods of work of the Commission adopted at its fiftieth session, which give particular attention to the sharing of experiences, lessons learned and good practices in overcoming challenges to full implementation at the national and international levels as well as to the evaluation of progress in the implementation of priority themes;

Calls upon Governments, and the relevant funds and programmes, organs and specialized agencies of the United Nations system, within their respective mandates, and invites the international financial institutions and all relevant actors of civil society, including non-governmental organizations, to intensify action to achieve the full and effective implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcome of the twenty-third special session, through, inter alia:

Sustained political will and commitment at the national, regional and international levels to take further action, inter alia, through the mainstreaming of gender perspectives, including through the development and use of gender equality indicators, as applicable, in all policies and programmes and the promotion of full and equal participation and empowerment of women, and enhanced international cooperation;

Promotion and protection of, and respect for, the full enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms by women and girls, including through the full implementation by States of their obligations under all human rights instruments, especially the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women;

Ensuring full representation and full and equal participation of women in political, social and economic decision-making as an essential condition for gender equality, and the empowerment of women and girls as a critical factor in the eradication of poverty;

Involving women actively in environmental decision-making at all levels, integrating gender concerns and perspectives in policies and programmes for sustainable development, and strengthening or establishing mechanisms at the national, regional and international levels to assess the impact on women of development and environmental policies and strategies, including those related to climate change, deforestation and desertification;

Integrating a gender perspective into the design, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and reporting of national environmental policies, strengthening mechanisms and providing adequate resources to ensure full and equal participation of women in decision-making at all levels on environmental issues, in particular on strategies related to the impact of climate change on the lives of women and girls;

Enhancing the role of women at all levels and in all aspects of rural development, agriculture, nutrition and food security, including by ensuring legislation and administrative reforms, including access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, credit, inheritance, natural resources and new technology;

Providing technical assistance to women, particularly in developing countries, to ensure the continuing promotion of human resources development and the development of environmentally sound technologies and of women’s entrepreneurship;

Respect for the rule of law, including legislation, and continued efforts to repeal laws and eradicate policies and practices that discriminate against women and girls, and to adopt laws and promote practices that protect their rights;

Strengthening the role of national institutional mechanisms for gender equality and the advancement of women, including through financial and other appropriate assistance, to increase their direct impact on women;

Undertaking socio-economic policies that promote sustainable development and ensure poverty eradication programmes, especially for women and girls, and strengthening the provision of and ensuring equal access to adequate, affordable and accessible public and social services, including education and training at all levels, as well as to all types of permanent and sustainable social protection/social security systems for women throughout their life cycle, and supporting national efforts in this regard;

Promoting and supporting increased access for all women and girls to information and communication technology, particularly women and girls living in poverty, and women and girls living in rural and remote areas and in disadvantaged situations, and enhancing international support to overcome the digital divide among countries and regions, and between women and men and girls and boys;

Taking further steps to ensure that the education system and the media, to the extent consistent with freedom of expression, support the use of non-stereotypic, balanced and diverse images of women presenting them as key actors of the process of development as well as promoting non-discriminatory roles of women and men in their private and public life;

Ensuring women’s and girls’ full and equal access to all levels of quality education and training, while ensuring progressively and on the basis of equal opportunities that primary education is compulsory, accessible and available free to all;

Incorporating gender perspectives and human rights in health-sector policies, programmes and research activities, paying attention to women’s and girls’ specific needs and priorities, ensuring women’s right to the highest attainable standards of health and their access to affordable and adequate health-care services, including sexual, reproductive and maternal health care and lifesaving obstetric care, in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, and recognizing that the lack of economic empowerment and independence has increased women’s vulnerability to a range of negative consequences, involving the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other poverty-related diseases;

Eliminating gender inequalities, gender-based abuse and violence; increasing the capacity of women and adolescent girls to protect themselves from the risk of HIV infection, principally through the provision of health care and services, including sexual and reproductive health, and the provision of full access to comprehensive information and education; ensuring that women can exercise their right to have control over, and decide freely and responsibly on, matters related to their sexuality in order to increase their ability to protect themselves from HIV infection, including their sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination and violence; and taking all necessary measures to create an enabling environment for the empowerment of women and to strengthen their economic independence, while, in this context, reiterating the importance of the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality;

Strengthening national health and social infrastructures to reinforce measures to promote women’s access to public health and taking action at the national level to address shortages of human resources for health by, inter alia, developing, financing and implementing policies, within national development strategies, to improve training and management and effectively govern the recruitment, retention and deployment of health workers, including through international cooperation in this area;

Adequate mobilization of resources at the national and international levels, as well as new and additional resources for the developing countries, including the least developed countries and countries with economies in transition, from all available funding mechanisms, including multilateral, bilateral and private sources;

Increased partnerships among Governments, civil society and the private sector;

Encouraging joint responsibility of men and boys with women and girls in the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women, based on the conviction that this is essential to the achievement of the goals of gender equality and the empowerment of women, development and peace;

Removing structural and legal barriers, as well as eliminating stereotypic attitudes, to gender equality at work, promoting equal pay for equal work or work of equal value and promoting the recognition of the value of women’s unremunerated work, as well as developing and promoting policies that facilitate the reconciliation of employment and family responsibilities;

Reaffirms that States have an obligation to exercise due diligence to prevent violence against women and girls, provide protection to the victims and investigate, prosecute and punish the perpetrators of violence against women and girls, and that failure to do so violates and impairs or nullifies the enjoyment of their human rights and fundamental freedoms, and calls upon Governments to elaborate and implement laws and strategies to eliminate violence against women and girls;

Welcomes the adoption of Security Council resolution 1820 (2008) on 19 June 2008;

Calls upon Governments, in this regard, to promote awareness and information campaigns on women’s rights and the responsibility to respect them, including in rural areas, and to encourage men and boys to speak out strongly against violence against women;

Strongly encourages Governments to continue to support the role and contribution of civil society, in particular non-governmental organizations and women’s organizations, in the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcome of the twenty-third special session;

Resolves to intensify the efforts of its Main Committees and subsidiary bodies to fully mainstream a gender perspective in their work, including by paying more attention to issues related to the status of women under their consideration and within their mandates, as well as in all United Nations summits, conferences and special sessions and in their follow-up processes;

Requests that reports of the Secretary-General submitted to the General Assembly and its subsidiary bodies systematically address gender perspectives through qualitative gender analysis and, where available, quantitative data, in particular through concrete conclusions and recommendations for further action on gender equality and the advancement of women, in order to facilitate gender-sensitive policy development;

Urges Governments and all entities of the United Nations system, including United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, and all relevant actors of civil society, to ensure the integration of gender perspectives in the implementation of and follow-up to all United Nations summits, conferences and special sessions and to give attention to gender perspectives in preparation for such events, including the Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development to Review the Implementation of the Monterrey Consensus in Doha in 2008;

Reaffirms its call to include a gender perspective in the consideration of all issues in the agenda and activities of the Peacebuilding Commission and the Human Rights Council;

Encourages the Economic and Social Council to continue its efforts to ensure that gender mainstreaming is an integral part of its work and that of its subsidiary bodies, through, inter alia, implementation of its agreed conclusions 1997/2 of 18 July 1997 and its resolution 2004/4 of 7 July 2004;

Welcomes the ministerial declaration of the high-level segment of the substantive session of 2008 of the Economic and Social Council, which, inter alia, reaffirmed the commitment to promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women, recognizing that they are key actors in development, and to identifying and accelerating concrete actions towards that end;

Requests all bodies that deal with programme and budgetary matters, including the Committee for Programme and Coordination, to ensure that programmes, plans and budgets visibly mainstream gender perspectives;

Reaffirms the primary and essential role of the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council, as well as the central role of the Commission on the Status of Women, in promoting the advancement of women and gender equality;

Requests the Economic and Social Council to continue to encourage its functional commissions to mainstream a gender perspective in their respective follow-up actions to major United Nations conferences and summits and to develop more effective means to ensure the implementation of outcomes on gender equality at the national level, including through increased consultation with the Commission on the Status of Women;

Underlines the catalytic role played by the Commission on the Status of Women, as well as the important role played by the Economic and Social Council and the General Assembly, in promoting and monitoring gender mainstreaming within the United Nations system;

Requests that the entities of the United Nations system systematically incorporate the outcomes of the Commission on the Status of Women into their work within their mandates, inter alia, to ensure effective support for the efforts of Member States towards the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women;

Reaffirms the commitment made at the 2005 World Summit to the full and effective implementation of Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) of 31 October 2000, while noting the eighth anniversary of its adoption and the open debates in the Council on women and peace and security, and encourages Governments to ensure systematic attention to, recognition of and support for the role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in peacebuilding efforts;

Urges Governments and the United Nations system to take further steps to ensure the integration of a gender perspective and the full and equal participation of women in all efforts to promote peace and security, including in peace negotiations, peacekeeping, peacebuilding and post-conflict situations, as well as to increase their role in decision-making at all levels, including through the development of national action plans and strategies;

Calls upon all parts of the United Nations system to continue to play an active role in ensuring the full, effective and accelerated implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome of the twenty-third special session, through, inter alia, the work of the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women and the Division for the Advancement of Women and the maintenance of gender specialists in all entities of the United Nations system, as well as by ensuring that all personnel, especially in the field, receive training and appropriate follow-up, including tools, guidance and support, for accelerated gender mainstreaming, and reaffirms the need to strengthen the capabilities of the United Nations system in the area of gender;

Requests the Secretary-General to review and redouble his efforts to make progress towards achieving the goal of 50/50 gender balance at all levels in the Secretariat and throughout the United Nations system, with full respect for the principle of equitable geographical distribution, in conformity with Article 101, paragraph 3, of the Charter of the United Nations, considering, in particular, women from developing and least developed countries, from countries with economies in transition and from unrepresented or largely underrepresented Member States, and to ensure managerial and departmental accountability with respect to gender balance targets, and strongly encourages Member States to identify and regularly submit more women candidates for appointment to positions in the United Nations system, especially at more senior and policymaking levels;

Encourages the subsidiary bodies of the General Assembly to incorporate gender-equality perspectives systematically in their discussions and outcomes, including through effective use of the analysis, data and recommendations contained in reports of the Secretary-General, and to follow up on the outcomes;

Requests that reports of the Secretary-General submitted to the General Assembly facilitate gender-sensitive policy development by more systematically including qualitative gender analysis, data and recommendations for further action;

Calls upon the United Nations system to continue its efforts towards achieving the goal of gender balance, including with the active support of gender focal points, and requests the Secretary-General to provide an oral report to the Commission on the Status of Women at its fifty-third and fifty-fourth sessions, to report to the General Assembly on a biennial basis, beginning at its sixty-fifth session, under the item entitled “Advancement of women”, and to include in his report on human resources management information on the status of women in the United Nations system, including on progress made and obstacles encountered in achieving gender balance, recommendations for accelerating progress, and up-to-date statistics, including the number and percentage of women and their functions and nationalities throughout the United Nations system, and information on the responsibility and accountability of the Office of Human Resources Management of the Secretariat and the secretariat of the United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination for promoting gender balance;

Requests the Secretary-General to continue to report annually to the General Assembly under the item entitled “Advancement of women”, as well as to the Commission on the Status of Women and the Economic and Social Council, on the follow-up to and progress made in the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcome of the twenty-third special session, with an assessment of progress in gender mainstreaming, including information on key achievements, lessons learned and good practices, and recommendations on further measures to enhance implementation.

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Follow-Up to the 4th World Conference on Women and Full Implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the Outcome of the 23rd Special Session of the General Assembly

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