Feminist approaches to justice at Beijing +30

Our ECOSOC-accredited NGO partners

The International Sociological Association (ISA) (https://www.isa-sociology.org/en) was founded in 1948 under the auspices of UNESCO. Headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, its goal is to represent sociologists everywhere, regardless of school of thought, scientific approaches, or ideological opinion, and to advance sociological knowledge throughout the world. Its 6000 members come from 126 countries. It holds special consultative status with ECOSOC and is also registered with the UN Department of Global Communications.

The American Society of Criminology (ASC) (https://asc41.org) is an international academic and professional organization centered on the pursuit of scholarly, scientific, and professional knowledge concerning the measurement, etiology, consequences, prevention, control, and treatment of crime and delinquency. It holds special consultative status with Economic Social Council of the UN (ECOSOC). The ASC’s Division of Feminist Criminology (https://ascdwc.com/) is centered on gender, crime, and justice and promotes research, theory, pedagogy, and curriculum.

Criminologists Without Borders (https://criminologists-without-borders.org/products) is a group of criminologists, researchers, professors, and those working in the field who seek to apply scientific findings and “best practices” to the policies and operations of crime prevention and criminal justice systems. It is a registered non-profit organization with special consultative status with ECOSOC that provides objective information and research to inform policy and programs dealing with crime and criminal justice. Criminologists without Borders provides annual research input into the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice and the CSW.

The World Society of Victimology (WSV) (https://www.worldsocietyofvictimology.org/) is an international organization founded in 1979. The WSV has Special Category consultative status with the Economic Social Council of the UN and the Council of Europe. The members of the WSV work to advance victimological research and practices around the world, encourage interdisciplinary and comparative work and research in the field of victimology, and advance cooperation between international, national, regional, and local agencies and other groups concerned with the problems of victims. Among the WSV members’ areas of interest and expertise include the fields of human rights, international relations, social services, and women’s rights.

The “feminist approaches to justice” parallel event panels

The International Sociological Association, the World Society of Victimology, Criminologists Without Borders, and the American Society of Criminology’s Division of Feminist Criminology hosted four collaborative “Feminist Approaches to Justice” panels held in conjunction with CSW69. These included panelists from Bangladesh, Canada, China, Finland, Germany, India, Lebanon, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Feminist approaches to justice: A reassessment of the Beijing platform for action

This virtual panel was chaired by Dr Sheetal Ranjan, Professor of Justice Studies and Sociology, Montclair State University, Founder, Healthcare Approaches to Justice Collaborative and Past Chair, Division of Feminist Criminology of the American Society of Criminology (USA). It examined the Beijing Platform for Action through the lens of women’s experiences in justice systems as practitioners and as those impacted by them. Panelists explored the roles and challenges faced by women as well as their experiences. The discussion analyzed policies that address or perpetuate gender inequities and considered the intersectionality of race, class, and gender in shaping outcomes. By reassessing justice frameworks, this panel aimed to highlight actionable strategies for advancing gender equity globally. Opening Remarks were provided by Dr Katheryn Russell-Brown, Levin, Mabie & Levin Professor of Law, and Director, Race and Crime Center for Justice, Northeastern University (USA), and then President, American Society of Criminology. Presentations included “Enhancing Support for Victims of Forced Marriage” by Dr Natalia Ollus, Director, European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, affiliated with the United Nations (HEUNI) (FINLAND); “Widening the Gendered Net of Harm? A Critical Analysis of Dowry Laws in India” by Dr Ntasha Bhardwaj, Founder, South Asian Institute of Crime and Justice Studies (INDIA), and Dr Jody Miller, Distinguished Professor, Rutgers School of Criminal Justice (USA); “Flip the Script: A Call to End Gender-Based Violence” by Dr Beulah Shekhar, Professor & Head of Division of Criminology & Forensic Science, Karunya Institute of Technology & Sciences (INDIA); “Women in Conflict Situations: Overcoming Barriers and Navigating Pathways to Justice” by Dr Sapna Sangra, Faculty, Department of Sociology, University of Jammu (INDIA); and “Dramatherapy and Mental Health: Lessons from Socioeconomically Disadvantaged and Refugee Women in Lebanon” by Dr Lina Haddad Kreidie, Assistant Professor of Gender Studies, Lebanese American University (LEBANON).

Feminist approaches to justice: Violence against women and girls in war and peace

This in-person event featured recent and relevant research on violence against women and girls in in wartime and peacetime. The panel was chaired by Dr Rosemary Barberet, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY), Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law, School of Justice, Queensland University of Technology (AUSTRALIA), Representative to the UN, International Sociological Association and Criminologists without Borders, and Member-at-Large, NGO CSW/NY Executive Committee. Opening Remarks were provided by Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, Former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Founder of the Global Movement for the Culture of Peace. Presentations included “Assessing the Activities of the Universities Network for the Protection of Children Before, During and After Armed Conflict” by Dr Jan Marie Fritz, Professor, University of Cincinnati (USA) and Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Johannesburg (SOUTH AFRICA), Member, Executive Committee of the Universities Network for the Protection of Children in Armed Conflict, and Member of the Executive Committee and Representative to the UN, International Sociological Association; “Institutionalized Misogyny: Sexual Violence as an Organizational and Security Issue in the U.S. Military” by Dr Stephanie Bonnes, Assistant Professor and Assistant Dean, Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences, University of New Haven (USA); “Strengthening International Criminal Justice Under a Feminist and Human-Rights Lens” by Ms Jelena Pia-Comella, CEDAW Expert Member and Adjunct Professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York (USA); and “Patriarchy continued: Conflict-Related Sexual Violence against Women and Girls as an Aggravation of Peacetime Discrimination” by Ms Anouk Noelle Nicklas, Research Associate, Humboldt-University of Berlin (GERMANY).

Feminist approaches to justice: Beijing +30 and justice for women and girls

This virtual panel was chaired by Dr Rosemary Barberet. It featured sociological and interdisciplinary research as well as policy-relevant recommendations related to the 30th Anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. It explored gender-based violence, migration, and women’s empowerment. Opening remarks were given by Dr Joy Y. Zhang, Professor of Sociology, Founding Director of the Centre for Global Science and Epistemic Justice, University of Kent, UK and Editor of Current Sociology monographs, where a peer-reviewed special issue from the presentations on these four panels is under contract. Presentations included “Beijing Declaration at 30: Milestones, Momentum, and the Path Forward” by Ms Xingjuan Wang, Founder and Chairperson of the Beijing Maple Women’s Psychological Counseling Service Center (PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA); “The Growing Global Movement to Prevent Femicide and Feminicide: Progress and Challenges” by Dr Myrna Dawson, Professor of Sociology, University of Guelph and Founder/Director of the Centre for the Study of Social and Legal Responses to Violence, (CANADA); “How Countries Compare in Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality Thirty Years After Beijing: Assessing National Reviews from Top- and Low-Ranking Countries” by Dr Solange Simões, Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies, Eastern Michigan University, (USA) and Co-President, Research Committee 32 (Women, Gender and Society) of the International Sociological Association”; and Beijing +30 “Toolkit to Reimagine Justice for Migrant Women” by Dr Lorena Ávila, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Criminology, Villanova University (USA).

Feminist approaches to justice: Beijing +30, women, and criminal legal systems

This in-person panel aligned with the focus of CSW69: the review and appraisal of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) and the outcomes of the 23rd special session of the General Assembly. The full realization of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and the commitment to gender equality requires a critical examination of the challenges that impede the implementation of the BPfA, including those related to the situation for women and girls involved in criminal legal systems as victims/survivors, detained or incarcerated persons, and workers in law enforcement, defense and prosecution, the judiciary, prisons, prisoner re-entry, victim advocacy, and peacebuilding. The panel was chaired by Dr Dawn Beichner-Thomas, UN Representative World Society of Victimology; Professor, Illinois State University (USA). Presentations included “Gender Dimensions in Crime Prevention: Insights from 2024 GLOTIP & UNODC’s Response,” by Ms Madioula Diakhite, Associate Expert in Crime Prevention, New York Liaison Office—United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (USA); “Girls Impacted by the System: New Challenges, Old Attitudes, Hopeful Futures—a Cross-National Review of the Beijing Rules +30” by Dr Michelle Lyttle Storrod, Assistant Professor, Widener University (USA) and Dr Ellen Van Damme, Research collaborator, Leuven Institute of Criminology, University of Leuven (BELGIUM); “Canadian Legislation to Prevent Honor-Based Violence and to Protect Girls and Women Victims” by Dr Estibaliz Jimenez, Professor, University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières (CANADA), Mr Bryan Dallaire-Tellier, Graduate Student, University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières (CANADA), Ms Martine Le Corff, Graduate Student, Université de Montréal (CANADA), and Dr Bilkis Vissandjee, Professor, University of Montréal (CANADA); and “Feminist Criminology in the BPfA: A Content Analysis” by Dr Rosemary Barberet, Dr Dawn Beichner-Thomas, and Dr Sheetal Ranjan, Professor, Montclair State University (USA).

Overview of the special issue

We thank Dr Joy Y. Zhang, editor of Current Sociology monograph series, for providing an outlet for our collaborative “Feminist Approaches to Justice” scholarship. We also wish to thank Meher Basit, Assistant Editor, for assisting us throughout the curation of the monograph issue. Each of the articles in this monograph issue was presented at the CSW69 NGO CSW forum in March 2025. The manuscripts were sent for double-blind peer review. The eight articles published here all address critical areas of concern in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

We are grateful to Soon-Young Yoon, former chair of NGO CSW/NY and founder and co-director of the Cities for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) History & Futures Project, for providing the foreword for this monograph issue. In her foreword, “Why Beijing +30 Still Matters,” Yoon reminisces about the Fourth World Conference on Women and its immediate aftermath, notes the wide and important impact of the BPfA over the past 30 years, yet reminds us of the fragility of the gains for women’s rights in the current era.

The authors of the articles in this monograph issue address a difficult question: What has the impact been of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action on justice for women and girls over the past 30 years? What are its achievements, and where has it failed? The contributions gathered here suggest that the answer is multi-faceted and complex. The BPfA remains the most ambitious and influential global framework for gender equality ever adopted, shaping international norms, national legislation, and feminist advocacy and research across three decades. Yet the articles in this issue also demonstrate how fragile those gains remain in a period marked by democratic erosion, militarization, and organized backlash against women’s rights. Together, the authors illuminate not only the unfinished agenda of Beijing but also the new terrains on which struggles for gender justice are now unfolding.

The issue opens with a timely conversation with Xingjuan Wang, whose reflections bridge the historical moment of Beijing 1995 with the realities of feminist activism in contemporary China. As one of the pioneers involved in grassroots responses to domestic violence in China, Wang offers detailed testimony. Her account reminds readers that the BPfA was never merely a diplomatic outcome document, but also a catalyst for local organizing, feminist consciousness, and program innovation. At the same time, the interview captures the tensions between transnational feminist aspirations and the political constraints under which activists continue to operate. Readers of Current Sociology will be particularly interested in the theoretical awakening experienced by Wang and her colleagues at the Fourth World Conference on Women and expressed in the BPfA. In many ways, Wang’s reflections set the tone for the issue as a whole: progress has been real, but always contingent and contested.

Several contributions examine the persistence of sexual and gender-based violence despite decades of international norm development. Bonnes’ article, “The Need for a Sexual Safety Framework: Deployment-Related Sexual Violence Against U.S. Servicewomen and Implications for the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda” examines the critical area of concern of women and armed conflict in the BPfA. She investigates deployment-related sexual violence against US servicewomen, revealing how the US military normalizes gendered insecurity in its own ranks, even while formally endorsing the Women, Peace, and Security agenda. Drawing on qualitative interviews, the article shows that women are routinely expected to manage the threat of assault through individualized survival strategies rather than through institutional protections. The article makes a powerful intervention by arguing that militaries cannot credibly claim to protect civilians from conflict-related sexual violence while failing to address sexual violence within their own ranks. In doing so, it exposes the continuities between militarized cultures of masculinity and broader patterns of wartime gender violence.

A complementary contribution asks why, despite 30 years of international attention, the world still fails to end conflict-related sexual violence. Reviewing developments in data collection, research, prosecution, and prevention since Beijing, Nicklas, in “Why the World still Fails to End Conflict-Related Sexual Violence 30 Years after the Beijing Declaration” paints a sobering picture of fragmented progress. Although scholarly understanding of CRSV has expanded considerably, reliable data remain scarce, prosecutions uneven, and prevention efforts largely ineffective. Particularly important is the article’s argument that the field still lacks an integrated framework capable of connecting structural causes, institutional failures, and material realities. The article therefore challenges global celebratory narratives by demonstrating the gap between normative commitments and the real outcomes for women and girls.

The issue also foregrounds the growing global movement against femicide and feminicide. Tracing developments within the United Nations system since the BPfA, Dawson, Filipetti, and Sangha examine how the naming and recognition of gender-related killings became central to transnational feminist mobilization. The article, entitled “Beijing 30+ and the global movement to prevent femicide and feminicide: The United Nations system as a societal level contributor to social change” situates contemporary campaigns against femicide within wider struggles against patriarchal backlash, democratic instability, and intensifying misogyny. By using the UN as a “barometer” of social movement visibility, the article demonstrates both the symbolic importance of international recognition and its limitations. The argument is especially resonant in the current political climate, where gains in visibility coexist with renewed threats to women’s bodily autonomy and safety.

Questions of criminal justice and institutional framing are explored in two particularly provocative contributions. “Beyond Victimhood: Feminist Criminology and the Beijing Platform’s Framing of Women in Criminal Justice” revisits the Beijing documents through the lens of feminist criminology, arguing that the BPfA overwhelmingly positioned women as victims while neglecting their roles as offenders, detainees, justice professionals, and peacebuilders. Through systematic content analysis, the authors reveal how this victim-centered paradigm reproduced traditional gender assumptions even while advancing important protections for women and girls. Barberet, Beichner-Thomas, and Ranjan’s critique is not a rejection of the BPfA’s achievements, but rather a call to move beyond narrow constructions of vulnerability and victimhood toward a more comprehensive understanding of gender and justice.

A related article examines how contemporary legal regimes in the United States, Honduras, and El Salvador circumvent international gender standards in practice. Focusing on women and girls affected by gang-related violence, incarceration, and digital crimes, Van Damme and Lyttle Storrod’s article, “From “Iron Fists” to Digital Traps: How Contemporary Legal Policies Bypass International Gender Standards” demonstrates the widening disconnect between international norms and punitive state practices. Particularly striking is the authors’ analysis of how new forms of criminalization and surveillance reproduce older gendered inequalities under technologically updated conditions. The article illustrates how contemporary governance often bypasses the spirit of Beijing while formally maintaining allegiance to its language and principles.

This special issue also turns attention to the relationship between international legal regimes. Pia-Comella, addressing the critical area of concern of women and armed conflict in the BPfA, offers a comparative analysis of the synergies between the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Geneva Conventions in combating sexual and gender-based violence. By bringing together international human rights law and humanitarian law, her article, “The synergies between the Geneva Conventions and the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women to combat sexual and gender-based violence against women in both times of peace and armed conflict” demonstrates how protections for women in peacetime and wartime are deeply interconnected rather than institutionally separate. Importantly, the article highlights the strategic role played by the CEDAW Committee’s extraordinary reporting mechanisms and partnerships in addressing violence across contexts of conflict and peace. In doing so, it points to the continuing importance of legal innovation even amid uneven enforcement.

The global dimensions of Beijing +30 are further explored through an assessment of India’s engagement with the BPfA. While India has consistently affirmed its commitment to gender equality, Sangra argues in “India and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action: Thirty Years of Rhetoric, Reform, and Reckoning” that the absence of a formal National Action Plan has limited the transformative impact of these commitments. By examining uneven progress across the BPfA’s 12 critical areas of concern, she highlights the gap between rhetorical support for women’s empowerment and the institutional mechanisms necessary to realize it. Particularly significant is the article’s insistence that implementation matters as much as aspiration: without sustained institutionalization, global gender frameworks risk becoming symbolic rather than transformative.

Conclusion

CSW69 and the NGO CSW69 Forum brought together a wide array of stakeholders invested in global efforts to advance gender equality and empower women and girls worldwide, focused on celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action while noting where implementation gaps remain and commitment could be strengthened. Through our collaborative panels, we focused on feminist approaches to justice. We examined the ways in which involvement with criminal legal systems come at a distinct, gendered cost for women—as victims, prisoners, and practitioners. The scholarship published in the special issue demonstrates the intricate intersection between women and girls and their involvement with the law, and criminal legal systems. Research on feminist approaches to justice for women and girls worldwide must consider the ways in which law can operate both as a source of rights and protection as well as a source of harm and ensure that criminal legal systems do not replicate existing systems of inequality.

Taken together, the contributions in this special issue reveal the enduring relevance of Beijing +30 precisely because the promises of Beijing remain unfulfilled. The BPfA continues to function simultaneously as aspiration, benchmark, and site of critique and contestation. The articles assembled here show that progress in gender equality cannot be measured solely through the proliferation of norms or policies, but must also be assessed through everyday institutional practices, material conditions, and lived experiences. Furthermore, the articles point out gaps in the BPfA that show that like all normative documents, it is a product of its time. They further demonstrate that backlash against women’s rights is not incidental to contemporary politics, but deeply embedded within broader crises of democracy, militarism, inequality, and authoritarianism.

At the same time, the issue offers grounds for cautious hope. Across diverse contexts, the contributions document the persistence of feminist research and activism, the expansion of transnational legal frameworks, and the continuing capacity of women’s movements to reshape political discourse. Thirty years after Beijing, the challenge is no longer simply to reaffirm the BPfA’s principles, but to confront the conditions that prevent their realization and future proof the document for the next decades. Beijing +30 therefore matters not only as an anniversary, but as an urgent reminder that the struggle for gender justice remains unfinished.