Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on the Beijing+30 Review | Asia-Pacific Portal for Gender Equality

ESCAP will convene the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on the Beijing+30 Review in collaboration with UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, in Bangkok, from 19-21 November 2024. The Conference will bring together Ministers, senior officials and representatives from relevant Ministries, civil society organizations, youth organizations, academia, the private sector, UN entities, independent experts and other key stakeholders from across the Asia-Pacific region to:

To assess progress to the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) in Asia and the Pacific over the past five years;
Review current and emerging challenges, good practices, lessons learned, and priority actions required to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women and its contribution towards the full realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development;
Provide a platform for member States and stakeholders to explore policy options and strategies, including innovative approaches, toward realizing gender equality and the empowerment of women;
Build regional consensus on priority actions to accelerate the implementation of commitments made in the BPfA;
Consolidate regional inputs to the sixty-ninth session of the Commission on the Status of Women which will focus on the review and appraisal of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcomes of the 23rd special session of the General Assembly

For more information, please see Concept note.

Background

Across Asia and the Pacific, accelerated action is needed to meet the ambitions of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development, including SDG 5 on gender equality and all other SDGs.

Despite significant strides in women's education and health, and some progress made in women’s political representation in the past three decades, progress towards gender equality and the empowerment of women appears to be stagnating, and even regressing in some areas such as labour force participation. Women and girls in the region continue to face discriminatory social norms and gender stereotypes, high levels of gender-based violence, disproportionate unpaid care and domestic work burden, among other challenges. The level of political will to address these issues remains inadequate. Moreover, women and girls have been disproportionately affected by multiple and inter-related crises that are expected to continue or worsen in the absence of accelerated action. For instance, the brunt of the socioeconomic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, the triple-planetary crisis (climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss), food security and energy crises, growing digital divides and increasing geopolitical tensions are being borne by women, with already marginalized and vulnerable groups being the hardest hit.

The Beijing+30 global review

In 2025, the global community will mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women and adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), and 10 years of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals.

This anniversary is the opportunity to strengthen gender-responsive action and implementation of the 2030 Agenda and other global commitments, such as including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979), the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (1994), the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (2000), the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing (2002), the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006); the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (2015); the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (2015), and regional commitments to promote gender equality and women’s and girls’ rights, such as and the Jakarta Declaration on the Asian and Pacific Decade of Persons with Disabilities, 2023–2032 (2022), among others. This anniversary should be used as the occasion to engage more with the generation of gender equality advocates and to bring those who remain on the sidelines into the centre of a whole-of-government, whole-of-society effort. By joining forces, governments together with society have the capacity to overcome and eradicate the root causes of gender inequality and chart a path forward for genuine, substantive equality, with equal rights and equal opportunities for women and girls.

The sixty-ninth session of the Commission on the Status of Women will take place at United Nations Headquarters in New York from 10 to 21 March 2025. The main focus of the sixty-ninth session will be on the review and appraisal of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) and the outcomes of the 23rd special session of the General Assembly. The review will include an assessment of current challenges that affect the implementation of the BPfA and the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women and its contribution towards the full realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

ECOSOC Resolution E/RES/2022/5 calls upon member States to undertake comprehensive national-level reviews of the progress made and challenges encountered. The regional commissions of the United Nations have been invited to undertake regional reviews and convene regional intergovernmental meetings. These will feed into the sixty-ninth session of the Commission.

In accordance with ECOSOC Resolution E/RES/2022/5, ESCAP will lead the Asia-Pacific regional intergovernmental review of the BPfA, in close collaboration with UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, and supported by the rest of the United Nations systems under the umbrella of the Asia-Pacific Issue-Based Coalition on Promoting Human Rights, Gender Equality and Women Empowerment.

The regional review aims to assess current and emerging challenges that affect the implementation of the BPfA and the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women and its contribution towards the full realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in the Asia-Pacific region, and strengthen the knowledge base on progress and gaps in realizing the rights of women and girls in the region. It aims to build regional consensus on actions needed to accelerate the implementation of commitments made in the BPfA. The Beijing+30 regional review will build upon the regional review conducted by ESCAP and UN Women for Beijing +25 and the resulting Asia-Pacific Ministerial Declaration on Advancing Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.

The Beijing +30 regional review will consist of three main tracks: analytical, consultative, and intergovernmental. The analytical track will examine progress, gaps, challenges, and good practices towards achieving the BPfA in the Asia-Pacific region and provide the substantive background to the conference. The consultative track will involve the engagement of stakeholders through a broad range of consultations. Finally, the intergovernmental track will directly engage ESCAP members in the regional review in order to take stock and identify and agree upon priority actions to accelerate the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women in the region at the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on the Beijing+30 Review.

Please click here for all information related to the Beijing+30 National-level Review and Survey Virtual Workshops convened on 3-4 April 2024 and here for the FAQs related to the submission of the survey and national report.

Please click here for all information related to the Beijing +30 South-South Exchange: Virtual Roundtable Identifying Priority Actions in Asia and the Pacific convened on October 17, 2024.

For information on the Beijing+25 regional review, please click here for the meeting report and Declaration and here for the synthesis report.

For further information, please contact: Social Development Division, ESCAP ([email protected]).

YouTube webcasting is available below:

Day 1: Tuesday, November 19, 2024, from 0900-1200 hrs.

WebTV URL:

https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1z/k1zqyx8jlg

YouTube link for 'Floor language':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-P_V3R7jD4

Day 1: Tuesday, November 19, 2024, from 1400-1700 hrs.

WebTV URL:

https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k14/k1482ai76s

YouTube link for 'Floor language':