Statement on the International Women’s Day

As we celebrate International Women’s Day, we reflect on the key global commitments and acknowledge the urgency to accelerate action to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. This year’s theme “For ALL Women and Girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment”, calls for an increased collaboration from all sectors to address existing inequalities, violence against women and girls, in order to close important gaps, including those in the digital sphere, to provide equal opportunities, and to advance women’s meaningful participation in decision-making.

We have instruments in place and a clear roadmap to help us achieve gender equality and advance the rights of women and girls worldwide. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action , adopted by 189 countries in 1995, seeks to “advance the goals of equality, development and peace for all women everywhere in the interest of all humanity”. Thirty years later this is still the most comprehensive global policy framework for the achievement of gender equality and advancing the rights of women and girls everywhere.

The 2030 UN Sustainable Development Agenda also reaffirms the need to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls and leave no one behind. The agenda calls for “a world in which every woman and girl enjoys full gender equality and all legal, social and economic barriers to their empowerment have been removed”. Furthermore, the UN Pact for the Future, adopted in 2024, stresses that “none of our goals can be achieved without the full, safe, equal and meaningful participation of all women in political and economic life”. Additionally, the UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security “urges Member States to ensure increased representation of women at all decision-making levels in national, regional and international institutions and mechanisms for the prevention, management, and resolution of conflict”.

The Warsaw Declaration, the founding document of the Community of Democracies adopted in 2000, recognizes the importance of women’s full participation as a crucial component of a democracy. It emphasizes that the “informed participation by all elements of society, men and women, in a country’s economic and political life, including by persons belonging to minority groups, is fundamental to a vibrant and durable democracy.” 

The Secretary General of the Community of Democracies together with the CoD Working Group on Women and Democracy members Finland, Lithuania, El Salvador, Guatemala, Japan, Uruguay, and the African Centre for Democracy and Human Rights Studies (ACDHRS), recognize that achieving gender equality, empowering women, and upholding the human, civil, and political rights of women and girls, make the world equal, fair, and thus better for everyone.