Across national boundaries, women have been organising networks and coalitions aimed at advancing human rights, environmental protection, and peace-building efforts, frequently doing so in contexts where social inequality has grown and civic freedoms have narrowed. Organising around common challenges, such groups draw people into collective engagement, though those at the helm have at times stepped away from public roles amid reported pressures.
A document submitted to the UN General Assembly by Cecilia Bailliet, serving as Independent Expert on human rights and international solidarity, urges expanded acknowledgement and formal protections for women at the forefront of those efforts. Her account covers the ways these groups advance more equitable societies, alongside the political, legal, and economic hurdles that limit full participation for many people.
Those engaged in solidarity-related activities encounter a range of pressures — from targeted harassment and digital abuse to surveillance operations, coordinated smear efforts, and legal proceedings — burdens that ultimately extend into their careers and constrain how freely they can speak. According to the document, organised opposition to gender equality has pushed a number of women out of political life, newsrooms, universities, and advocacy roles, while those who remain have grown increasingly cautious about speaking out.
Harassment or intimidation that puts participation at risk carries consequences felt not just by the individual targeted, but by the wider groups and interests that person represents.
Bailliet has put forward the position that the breadth of women's exclusion from political, legal, and economic participation is itself a potential threat to peace, and called on states to acknowledge and draw on women's efforts rather than allowing restricted civic space and discriminatory practices to erode them.
Formal legal protections for equal treatment are on the books across numerous nations, yet women navigating those same systems routinely run into barriers that obstruct their path to redress. Where legal aid falls short and discrimination remedies prove inadequate, those affected may find themselves without the means to pursue a case or obtain any resolution for the harm done to them. Barriers to civic engagement leave women with fewer practical avenues for contesting discriminatory treatment or shaping the policies that govern their daily circumstances.
A gap persists between rights that statutes formally acknowledge and the practical capacity of people to act on those protections — a divide the report brings into focus.
Organising around principles of collective care and shared accountability, these movements — led by women — address the conditions at hand. At the heart of their approach, according to the document, lies an acknowledgement that human lives are bound up with one another, a reality they treat as the basis for building societies that are both more equitable and more enduring.
In Bailliet's view, coordinated effort and mutual aid among groups hold the potential to drive meaningful shifts in society. The Independent Expert called on governments to strengthen international cooperation frameworks while also advocating for women to hold meaningful roles in the rooms where policies and institutions affecting their lives take shape.
Among the proposals put forward are expanded pathways to legal recourse, measures to address harassment and violence carried out online, and safeguards designed to shield women engaged in activism. Those fleeing persecution on the basis of gender retain access to asylum protections, Bailliet noted, while at a time when armed conflict, militarism, and exploitation continue to put human rights at risk, movements built around women's solidarity offer an alternative grounded in principles of equality, care, and peace.
Her remarks called on the global community to revisit strategies aimed at dismantling authoritarian structures and broadening civil liberties, so that women hold a genuine role in determining what the world looks like for those alive today and those yet to come.
