“Who gets hurt when democracies fall?” Billions pledged at Paris conference to tackle pandemic impact on women and girls

by Lavinia Spieß

Women’s rights organisations, world leaders, and philanthropists have pledged over $40 billion to tackle gender equality at the Generation Equality conference held in Paris. The international conference was meant to be held last year to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women but was moved to 2021 due to the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus of the three day session was the deep impact of the pandemic on women and girls globally as well as issues that impede on women’s rights.


The topics discussed included forced marriage, gender-based violence, leaving school, work inequality, losing out on innovation and technology as well as sexual and reproductive rights and health. Kamala Harris, US Vice President referenced the disproportionate impact the pandemic had on women:

“Democracy is in peril. Strongmen have become stronger. Human rights abuses have multiplied,” she said. “And who gets hurt when democracies fall? When democracies falter? … Well, women and girls are among those who suffer.”

French President, Emmanuel Macron, highlighted that throughout the pandemic, another 47 million women fell into poverty while others were deprived of personal freedom, the choice of contraception, and medical treatment. He commented:

“While they were on the frontline of the fight against COVID, women are the first victims of this health crisis.”

Several significant pledges were made in order to address these inequalities. Melinda French Gates pledged $2.1 billion from the Bill and Melinda Gates’ foundation, the largest donation the foundation has ever made, on health and family planning programmes as well as economic empowerment projects, spread out over the next five years. While the Ford Foundation announced a $420 million pledge to address the pandemic impacts on women specifically and the World Bank stated that it will be funding women’s programmes in 12 African states.
As part of the UN Human Rights Council 47th session currently underway in Geneva, an interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on violence against women addressed sexual and reproductive health rights, as well as rape as a systematic human rights violation. Countries had the chance to discuss potential solutions to gender based violence while also highlighting global inequalities.
Yet while progress in gender equality is being made globally, Turkey, the first signatory of the 2011 Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence- known as The Istanbul Convention- withdrew. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a presidential decree in March which became law on 1 July 2021 officially withdrawing Turkey from the Istanbul Convention. Officials commented that the Istanbul Convention was being instrumentalized to “normalize homosexuality” which went against Turkey’s traditional societal and family values.
This action landed a huge blow to Turkish women’s rights and caused women’s rights campaigners across the world to protest. A court appeal to halt Turkey’s withdrawal was rejected this week for being “unjust and without legal basis.”
Canan Gullu, president of the Federation of Turkish Women’s Associations denounced the rejection of the appeal and stated that “Turkey is shooting itself in the foot with this decision”, referencing the fact that since March, women and other vulnerable groups have been more reluctant to ask for help and much less likely to receive it. Furthermore, the financial difficulties associated with the pandemic have drastically exacerbated domestic violence against women.
In response to the global criticism, on 29 June 2021, Erdogan’s office stated to the administrative court:

“Our country’s withdrawal from the convention will not lead to any legal or practical shortcoming in the prevention of violence against women.”

Despite Erdogan insisting that withdrawal from the convention will not harm women, femicide has surged in Turkey. One of the groups monitoring it has documented roughly one case of femicide per day over the last five years. This is not the time for Turkey to be undermining women’s rights, and by extension, human rights.