Thirty years after the Beijing Platform for Action: Experiences of institutionalisation, emerging generations of feminists, the rise of global anti-rights trends, and contemporary fault lines

Overview

The 69th session of the United Nations (UN) Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69) was convened in New York in March 2025 to mark 30 years since the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA) during the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. This commemoration unfolded under extraordinary circumstances, as the global South faces wars, genocides, extermination, and intensifying climate collapse, while global leaders remain largely apathetic in the face of polycrises and entrenched injustice. This article reflects on the current moment through the lens of CSW69, analysing how the BPfA institutionalised gender equality via the creation of National Women’s Machineries. These institutions have endured and, in some contexts, remain well-resourced, yet they appear disconnected from the priorities of feminist movements that have emerged over the past three decades. Younger and intersectional feminist movements in the South-West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region have expanded the feminist agenda beyond the original Beijing framing, diagnosing multiple and intersecting inequalities while addressing what the BPfA missed, including unpaid care economies and migration, queer and transgender rights, digital surveillance, and ecological collapse. Meanwhile, the rise of emboldened anti-rights actors, shrinking resources, and protracted conflicts further complicate the terrain of gender justice. Drawing on CSW69 proceedings and the lived knowledge of feminist actors in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, the article situates contemporary struggles within global and regional feminist politics. It asks what is required to counter adversaries who have adapted, co-opted, and out-organised feminist gains, and how movements can build on Beijing while moving beyond its limits.