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By Shobha Shukla – CNS
Despite the right to health and gender equality being fundamental human rights, the world is off track from delivering on these goals in the next 62 months (by 2030). Anti-rights and anti-gender pushbacks have made the situation even more grim. Activists are pinning hope on an upcoming global meet to galvanize a stronger and more equitable response to deliver on these goals.
The world’s largest meeting on sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice (SRHRJ) will open in the next two weeks in Colombia on the theme “Equity through action: advancing SRHRJ for all.” Formally called the International Conference on Family Planning, or #ICFP2025, this meeting also marks 30 years since the Beijing Declaration and its Platform for Action were adopted in 1995.
The 80th United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting was held last month to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the 4th World Conference on Women (where the Beijing Declaration 1995 was adopted along with its Platform for Action).
“The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action is the most ambitious global political commitment on women’s rights ever achieved. It affirmed that the rights of women and girls are not separate, secondary, or negotiable—they are human rights. It has helped to power advances in some critical areas—legal protection, political participation, education, maternal mortality, recognizing the need to tackle violence against women as a global priority, and more. But progress has been slow and uneven, and no nation has achieved full equality for women and girls and gender-diverse peoples,” said Shobha Shukla, host of SHE & Rights (Sexual Health with Equity & Rights) and lead discussant for SDG-3 at the United Nations High Level Political Forum (HLPF 2025).
Separating the signal from the noise
“The International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP 2025) has received a record number of 5174 abstract submissions—the highest ever in its history. This means that many more ideas were competing for attention. A bigger responsibility was for the organizers and different ICFP committees to separate the signal from the noise itself. Signals are emerging across the scientific program and community agenda from the ICFP 2025. For example, you will see there are topics around climate SRHRJ popping up everywhere, from the heat supply chains or displacements to financing, resilience, and shrinking civic spaces, among others. Topics like youth leadership have moved into the core ICFP 2025 program. There are a lot of youth-focused sessions, including a youth pre-conference, which is 100% led by the young people from all over the world. Youth sub-committee meetings have taken place every month in the lead-up to ICFP 2025,” said Dina Chaerani, host of Sex O’Clock News, Family Planning News Network (FPNN), and YIELD Hub.
“Many more pre-conferences are happening around ICFP 2025. For example, on youth, comprehensive sexuality education, and other issues,” said Dina.
SRHRJ trends turning into actual practices
“ICFP 2025 is doubling up on the accessibility. There are plenary sessions and ICFP Live stage sessions, and select high-impact sessions will be live-streamed on YouTube as well and recorded to an online library, so people who cannot be there physically can also watch them online or virtually. If you want deep technical dives into the ICFP 2025 program, then there is a paid virtual scientific stream as well,” added Dina.
Dina was one of the keynote speakers for the SHE & Rights session held ahead of the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP 2025) on the theme “It is time for accountability and action after the UNGA High-Level Meeting around Beijing+30.”
The 80th UNGA saw progress but also pushbacks.
At the 80th UN General Assembly this year, there were attempts made by the USA to “torpedo” gender equality and the human right to health. The USA government categorically said at the UN High-Level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases and Mental Health (on 25th September 2025) that it does not recognize a “constitutional or international right to abortion.”
However, at the United Nations Economic and Social Council, the decision to revitalize the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) was adopted by consensus, which gives hope. It was also decided that the first United Nations High-Level Meeting on ending violence against women and girls would be held at the 70th UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70) in 2026.
“The CSW revitalization process is an effort by the UN to strengthen the mandate of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). We put out an advocacy brief that made 3 clear demands,” said Shiphrah Belonguel, Global Advocacy Officer, Fòs Feminista (International Alliance for Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice – SRHRJ). Fos Feminista also serves as co-convener of the Women’s Rights Caucus (WRC), a global self-organized feminist space that engages with the CSW process.
Shiphrah lists out the 3 key asks:
1. Defending and strengthening the mandate of the CSW as a robust normative platform for gender equality.
2. Ensuring that the agreed conclusions that come out of the process remain a central and ambitious normative framework, reaffirming member states’ commitments to the Beijing Declaration and its Platform for Action, and
3. Safeguarding civil society participation and preventing any rollback of civic space.
“So, demand-3 has been a particularly contentious point of advocacy, especially with several member states who have pushed back against institutionalizing practices related to civil society participation, such as the civil society town hall. Since our collective advocacy, the revitalization resolution has already been adopted within the framework of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC),” said Shiphrah.
Women’s rights, bodily autonomy, and SRHRJ are not negotiable.
“It is also important to contextualize all of this like all of these processes that are happening in the UN, to help us understand how governments are pushing gender equality. We have seen that during the UN High-Level Meeting, some are twisting gender equality language to push for a more pronatalist agenda, framing women’s lives only through the lens of fertility and population. And we know that’s deeply dangerous,” added Shiphrah.
“When we get to ICFP 2025, we need to be clear. We need to come together as a community and really think through and about how family planning is being tied to ‘panic around fertility crisis’ or demographic panics. We have to insist as a community of SRHRJ advocates that women’s rights, bodily autonomy, and reproductive justice are not negotiable and they will always be integral to any family planning programming and activities,” rightly added Shiphrah. “For now, our priority is to keep feminist movements inside these processes and monitor them and disrupt as necessary, making sure that UN reform does not hollow out civil society space and does not sideline gender and human rights but elevates them.”
The SHE & Rights session was jointly hosted by the Global Center for Health Diplomacy and Inclusion (CeHDI), the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) 2025, Y-PEER Asia Pacific, Y-PEER Laos, the Family Planning News Network (FPNN), the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), the Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW), the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR), the Asia Pacific Media Alliance for Health and Development (APCAT Media), and CNS.
Despite promises made by all the governments to deliver on gender equality and the right to health, progress remains patchy and sketchy, and fragile at best. We need to walk the talk on commitments enshrined in so many legally binding UN treaties, agreements, declarations, and other instruments, along with the UN Charter.
