The Global Campaign for Equality in Family Law, of which Equality Now is a founding Coordination Committee member, along with UN Women and leading faith-based and regional women’s rights organizations, examines family law as a body of statutes, rules, and regulations, court procedures, and customary and uncodified laws and practices that govern relationships within family units. The ultimate goal is equality for all women and men under the law in all matters relating to the family, regardless of religion and culture.
The campaign has three main aims:
- Sexist family and related laws are repealed or reformed by national governments, introduction of bad family and related laws are blocked, and further legal guarantees of equality are adopted (including through progressive court judgments).
- Governments implement treaty obligations and international commitments to provide equality under family law, and in practice.
- Reservations to Article 16 of CEDAW which guarantees equality in family relations are withdrawn.
A window of opportunity for global mobilization towards ending discrimination against women in family law has opened with the Generation Equality Forum (GEF) as well as the upcoming Beijing +30 and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) processes in 2022 and 2025.
The following achievements will put pressure on governments to live up to their responsibility to protect and promote the rights of all women and girls in family law as part of a campaign to 2030:
- The UN and other international fora and regional bodies bring pressure to bear on national governments to achieve equality in family law.
- Women’s rights activists and civil society actors organize and challenge patriarchal family systems, laws, and practices.
- Religious and cultural leaders promote positive changes for women and girls in the family.
Our partners
As founding members of the Global Campaign for Equality in Family Law, we are privileged to be able to collaborate with and uplift the work of many of our partners around the globe. These partners are:
- Act Church of Sweden
- The Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights (CLADEM)
- The African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) representing Solidarity for African Women’s Rights Network (SOAWR)
- Musawah
- Muslims for Progressive Values
- UN Women
- Women’s Learning Partnership
Together with our partners, over the course of 2022 and beyond, we will be convening a series of roundtable discussions with policymakers, movement leaders, and other stakeholders. These discussions will be a forum enabling participants to collaboratively address some of the challenges facing gender equality in family law, to address strategies to move ahead, and to reflect upon recent victories.
