Current Sociology

This editorial introduction presents a special monograph issue of Current Sociology titled “Feminist Approaches to Justice at Beijing +30,” guest-edited by Rosemary Barberet, Dawn Beichner-Thomas, and Sheetal Ranjan. The issue marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA), a landmark 1995 framework for gender equality that has shaped global advocacy, policy, and research yet remains under-analyzed in contemporary sociological scholarship. The editors situate the issue within the 69th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69), held in March 2025, which drew over 13,000 participants and formally adopted a Political Declaration reaffirming member states’ commitments to the BPfA. Drawing on four collaborative “Feminist Approaches to Justice” panels convened at the NGO CSW69 Forum by four ECOSOC-accredited organizations—the International Sociological Association, the American Society of Criminology’s Division of Feminist Criminology, Criminologists Without Borders, and the World Society of Victimology—the editors introduce eight peer-reviewed articles that critically assess the BPfA’s impact on justice for women and girls. The articles address themes including conflict and military-related sexual violence, femicide, a feminist criminology examination of the BPfA, the criminalization of women in gang-affected contexts, synergies between international human rights and humanitarian law, and India’s uneven implementation of Beijing commitments. Together, they illuminate both the enduring relevance and the persistent limitations of the BPfA.

Beijing+30 was a call to action to implement the Beijing Platform for Action. Adopted by 189 countries at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, this document remains the gold standard for policies on gender equality and women’s empowerment. The question is, have we made progress? There is certainly reason for doubt. Leaders at the very top attempt to undermine women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights, defund access to justice for survivors of sexual violence, and openly condemn champions of women’s human rights.

This article is an interview between the guest editors of this monograph issue and Xingjuan Wang, a Chinese feminist activist and a co-founder of the Maple Women’s Psychological Counseling Hotline, one of the earliest grassroots initiatives supporting women facing domestic violence in China. Xingjuan Wang was present at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. In this exchange, she reflects on her work as well as the impact of the conference and its outcome documents, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

This article examines the elevated risk of sexual violence experienced by US servicewomen during deployment and the implications of internal military sexual violence for the prevention of conflict-related sexual violence against civilians. Drawing on qualitative interviews with servicewomen, this study highlights how deployment environments amplify harassment and assault, perpetuated by a culture of warrior masculinity and institutional tolerance for gendered aggression. I show that predeployment briefings and informal mentorships warn women of sexual danger on deployment. In deployment settings, women are instructed to rely on hypervigilant individual strategies, such as walking in pairs or living near other women, rather than being supported by systemic institutional safeguards. These informal and gendered risk-management practices reflect an organizational awareness of sexual threat that coexists with institutional inaction or dismissal when violence occurs. The article situates these findings within the framework of the United Nations’ Women, Peace, and Security agenda and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, emphasizing that militaries’ capacity to protect civilians from conflict-related sexual violence should account for how they address sexual violence within their own ranks. It argues that internal sexual violence is not distinct from conflict-related sexual violence but interconnected through shared environments of militarized aggression. The article calls for a systemic lens of sexual safety to be integrated into leadership, operations, practices, and policies, finding this is essential to ensure institutional accountability for sexual violence against servicemembers and civilians.

The adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 1995 was a fundamental step in developing a comprehensive international policy framework on women’s human rights and women’s protection from violence. With regard to conflict-related sexual violence, the international community was called upon to collect data on its prevalence, to conduct research on its causes and consequences, to ensure its effective prosecution, and to implement preventive measures. Yet, 30 years later, conflict-related sexual violence is as widespread as ever. In a quest for the causes of this ongoing failure to end conflict-related sexual violence and based on a review of the relevant academic and policy literature, the article evaluates the progress in the four categories, identifying persistent gaps in their implementation. To this day, accurate data on CRSV is scarce. Although research on CRSV has made significant progress and several risk and protective factors have been identified, an integrated understanding of the different phenomena remains absent. The prosecution of CRSV is still impeded by normative, cultural, and practical obstacles. And despite extensive policy efforts addressing CRSV, their practical consequences on its prevalence remain limited. The article closes with recommendations for future data collection, research, and policy efforts.

The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995) are seminal cornerstones of global gender equality policy that have shaped the work of the Commission on the Status of Women for the past 30 years. They have also served as a basis, benchmark, or ideal for academic researchers to align with global gender equality objectives. However, they have not been the focus of systematic research in feminist criminology. We conducted a systematic content analysis of the text of these outcome documents of the Fourth World Conference on Women to measure their treatments of three core areas of feminist criminology. While both documents powerfully advanced the rights of women and girls, our analysis demonstrates that their treatment of women and criminal justice is notably one-dimensional, framing women primarily as victims while largely overlooking the complex and multifaceted roles they occupy as offenders, detainees, and professionals within the criminal justice system. Our analysis reveals how the Beijing Declaration and the Beijing Platform for Action reinforce a victim-centric paradigm that downplays the structural and systemic injustices faced by women and girls who violate the law, and fail to recognize the accomplishments and challenges faced by women working in law enforcement, judicial, custodial, and peacebuilding professions. In doing so, they reveal a particular gender regime that makes some gains for women’s victimhood, but reinforces traditional gender roles overall. We argue for a more holistic and inclusive approach to gender and justice in global policy frameworks. By broadening the lens beyond victimhood, international gender policy can more effectively contribute to equitable and just criminal justice systems worldwide and truly fulfill the aims of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

Thirty years after the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA), the treatment of women and girls within the criminal justice system remains a critical area where international law clashes with national practice. This article looks at how the implementation of UN frameworks, including the BPfA, the Beijing Rules, and the Bangkok Rules, are applied to women and girls in conflict with the law in the United States, Honduras, and El Salvador. By reflecting on data from research projects conducted between 2015 to date, this study demonstrates in particular that UN normative framework regarding the least possible use of institutionalization (BPfA Chapter IV, Sections C and D, Beijing Rule 19 & Bangkok Rule 2.1) and the elimination of discrimination (Beijing Declaration Paragraph 24, Beijing Rule 26.4, and Bangkok Rule 1) are not effectively applied to women and girls. The findings reveal significant contradictions between international standards and lived realities when it comes to contemporary phenomena such as gangs and digital crimes.

This article reviews feminist literature to contextualize how sexual and gender-based violence against women is rooted in discriminatory gender-power dynamics. Indeed, sexual and gender-based violence against women, such as rape, forced marriage and lack of access to sexual and reproductive health care, constitutes a gross violation of women’s rights in times of peace, which is exacerbated during armed conflicts and can amount to war crimes. The article will then offer an innovative comparative analysis of the main provisions of International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law that prevent and address violations of women’s rights. More specifically, the article examines the synergies between the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women Convention and the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their 1977 Additional Protocols (the Geneva Conventions) in establishing standards for the protection of women’s rights in both times of peace and in armed conflict situations. Despite limitations in the compliance enforcement of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women Committee’s extraordinary reporting mechanism and the implementation of its Framework of Cooperation with the United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict remain a strategic tool supporting national and international efforts to prevent and combat sexual and gender-based violence against women, both in times of peace and armed conflict.

While India has consistently voiced its commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment, it lacks a formal National Action Plan (NAP) specifically dedicated to implementing the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BDPfA). This institutional gap limits the transformative potential of the BDPfA and delays progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 5 of the 2030 Agenda. The Human Development Report 2025, published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), underscores this disconnect: India’s Gender Development Index (GDI) score stands at 0.874, placing it in group 5, the lowest-performing group globally in terms of gender parity. In contrast, countries such as Iceland (0.972), Norway (0.970), and Switzerland (0.970) are among the highest-ranked globally and are recognised for achieving near gender parity. Despite advancements in women’s education and political participation, India’s performance across the 12 critical areas of concern outlined in the BDPfA remains uneven. To bridge this gap, an NAP should be enacted as a priority to institutionalise the BDPfA and align India’s domestic actions with evolving global standards.