Sapna Kamal Sangra
sapna.sangra@gmail.com
With the sudden rise in conflicts across the globe and sharp cuts in grants supporting women and gender-specific policy initiatives in recent years, one is compelled to critically examine how contemporary anti-feminist trends will impact Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG 5) on gender equality. This question becomes even more urgent as we celebrate International Women’s Day 2026, coinciding with the United Nations’ largest annual gathering on gender equality and women’s rights at its headquarters in New York: the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70).
Having participated in the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women in person in March 2025, I can say with conviction that these annual convenings significantly influence laws, policies, funding priorities and accountability frameworks across countries and generations. The normative frameworks negotiated and reaffirmed at the CSW often travel far beyond the conference halls, shaping national legislation, civil society advocacy, and international funding commitments.
The CSW70 priority theme: “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” rightly draws urgent attention to the present moment. While elaborate legal frameworks exist in theory, the reality for many women and girls is the denial of their rights in practice.
Conflict, repression and political tensions have placed justice systems under immense strain, marginalising and excluding those already at the margins. Globally, women and girls have just 64 percent of the legal rights afforded to men, as reported by the World Bank in 2024. Too often, they are turned away, ridiculed, not believed, revictimised, or left without meaningful legal support. Justice is not blind, but our systems are. They often lack transparency, accountability and accessibility. Instead of dismantling entrenched hierarchies, they frequently protect centres of power, reinforce the status quo, and undermine the very idea of an equal world.
Under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, member states pledged to guarantee equal access to justice for all and to establish legal frameworks that promote, enforce and monitor equality and non-discrimination. These commitments are rooted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Yet, the widening gap between commitment and implementation remains stark.
In 2024, over 185 armed conflicts were recorded worldwide, and approximately 676 million women and girls lived within 50 kilometers of these conflicts. The United Nations documented an 87 percent increase between 2022 and 2024 with 4,600 reported cases of conflict-related sexual violence. More than 60 million forcibly displaced and stateless women and girls continue to face heightened risks of gender-based violence. Pregnant and breastfeeding mothers are increasingly confronted with acute malnutrition amidst conflict-driven hunger and targeted attacks on healthcare systems.These realities underscore the disproportionate cost borne by women and girls in contexts of conflict and institutional fragility. While investing in girls’ education is widely recognised as critical to achieving SDG 5, the stark reality remains that over 85 million crisis-affected children are out of school, 51.9 percent of them girls.
Equal Measures 2030, a global coalition of Women’s Rights Organisations working at national, regional and global levels to connect data and evidence with advocacy and action on gender equality, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals observes that in the decades leading up to and the years following the Beijing Women’s Conference in 1995, funding for Women’s Rights Organizations rose as international donors paid more attention to struggles for women’s rights across the world. But the interest did not last long. Donors began failing to meet the funding commitments and resources for the women’s rights organising began to dry up. At precisely this moment of heightened vulnerability, the biggest dip in aid came from the Trump administration’s abrupt freezing, in January 2025, of all US foreign aid, followed by its decision to cut over 80 percent of it. A survey conducted by UN Women in March 2025 found that nearly half of the 411 organisations surveyed were expecting to shut down within six months due to budget cuts. The critical role played by the women’s organisations in bridging the gender gap is nothing short of a lifeline towards achieving SDG 5. Defunding these organisations weakens the institutional backbone of gender justice at precisely the moment it is needed most.
It is time to confront the multiple and overlapping barriers that prevent women from seeking justice: fear, silence, prohibitive costs, lack of legal aid and representation, complex and inaccessible institutions, deeply rooted bias, and the ever-present threat of backlash and stigma. We must create enabling systems in which women feel safe and are able to assert their rights with dignity and confidence. Justice for all women and girls can only be realised by ending impunity, holding perpetrators accountable, adequately funding legal aid, removing discriminatory laws and supporting organisations that are pushing institutions to transform in favour of a more equal world.
At a time when armed conflicts are escalating and funding for gender justice initiatives is being sharply reduced, strengthening justice systems is not an option but an urgency. On International Women’s Day and beyond, governments must recommit to building systems that are accessible, accountable and responsive to women and girls everywhere. This requires sustained political will, predictable financing for women’s rights organisations, and enforceable accountability mechanisms. Without political will and sustained investment, the promise of equality will remain rhetorical; with it, justice can move from aspiration to reality. As UN Women has rightly put it, “women and girls have never been closer to equality, and never closer to losing it.”
(The author teaches Sociology at the University of Jammu)
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