The 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is being celebrated this year, which is a historic moment, recognizing and endorsing the past six decades of work to secure the conventions and treaties that make up the human rights framework. The principles of the Declaration gave legitimacy to activists around the world who were calling for the realization of universal human rights. Over the past 60 years, women have created groundbreaking global and local efforts to challenge gender inequality and discrimination. Feminist approaches to human rights are being developed and used around the world. Women’s advocacy has brought about pioneering change in areas such as education, health, law and justice and political participation – and not to forget the interpretations of the human rights framework itself.

The global frameworks for realizing women’s rights have been spelled out in the Women’s Convention popularly known as CEDAW (Convention on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women), and in documents from other UN processes, such as the Vienna Human Rights Declaration, the Cairo Programme of Action, the Beijing Platform for Action, the Millennium Development Goals and the World Summit. Women have successfully demanded state political will to create meaningful change, but the implementation and resources to fulfill these promises, however, remain deficient.