Generation Equality Forum Paris
The largest global feminist gathering in 26 years, the Generation Equality Forum is a civil society–centred, global gathering for gender equality.
The objective of the Forum is to assimilate all stakeholders committed to gender equality to review progress and offer concrete solutions to accelerate progress in this last decade for attaining Sustainable Development Goals.
The Generation Equality Forum is a global call for urgent action by governments, UN System, the private sector, and civil society, for much-needed financial investments and policy commitments to co-create feminist futures with young leadership. This collective call seeks to dismantle barriers to women’s progress through working across generations and sectors on priority issues.
Organised in two parts – Mexico (29-31 March 2021) and Paris (30 June-2 July 2021) – eighty-five countries and 10,000 participants came together at the Mexico Forum to mark the once-in-a-decade opportunity; imagine young feminist movements with alternative and determined visions for future. What started with the Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action in 1995 continues to grow with a new generation of activists demanding commitment to long-term change for gender equity, justice and rights.
As articulated by UN Women’s Executive Director Madam Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, “No one can wait any longer. With the driving energy of a new vast and diverse population of feminists across multiple sectors, we can and must achieve gender equality in our generation. The Generation Equality Forum will help us turn the promise of the Beijing Platform for Action into a lived global reality through smart, targeted and financed actions that deliberately break the old barriers and cumulatively entrench human rights.”
France as co-chair
In the run-up to the Generation Equality Forum, the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and the Minister Delegate for Gender Equality, Diversity and Equal Opportunities collaborated with the Open Diplomacy Institute to organise a Grand Tour comprising 14 consultative conferences organised in higher education institutions across France to mobilise local stakeholders and encourage citizens to participate in French feminist diplomacy.
French local governments also participated in the Forum by organising events promoting gender equality. The Ambassador and Secretary General of the Generation Equality Forum, Delphine O, participated in a panel on the action of local governments, mobilized for gender equality here and across the world with other important actors of decentralized cooperation, who discussed the importance of decentralized cooperation, gender-sensitive budgeting and economic and social policies applied at the local level to advance gender equality - particularly within the framework of the French feminist diplomacy strategy and of the Generation Equality Forum. Local charities and associations were also invited to register their activities and feed the programme.
The Generation Equality Forum was an official partner of the Paris Peace Forum and was selected as one of the 100 "Solutions for Peace".
Gender Equality Festival in India with the French cooperation network
In India, the Embassy of France / French Institute in India in collaboration with the Alliance Française network and their partners organised a series of engagements beginning with Women’s Day. Interventions included stories of women change-makers from rural India with the Apollo Tyres Foundation, signing of charters related to the creative and cultural industries notably cinema, projects with children from schools, gender studies programmes for students, artists on equality, empowerment and ecology, debates on feminist works like “Persepolis”, and icons like Simone de Beauvoir, women in science, a series of podcasts on gender equality, digital literacy for women in Jaipur, debunking myths on the LGBTQ+ community, women travellers and even slogans from Indian audiences. Overall, a total of 67 events spoke up for equality. The campaign will continue well beyond the Forum and become a part not only of France’s engagement with India, but also the world over.
Speaking on this programme of activities, H.E. Mr Emmanuel Lenain, Ambassador of France to India, said, “Gender parity and diversity are the cornerstones of civil society and are also a vital criteria for economic growth. Gender equality is a priority for the French government and is at the core of its international action in all domains, be it sustainable development and economic policy, the environment, security, creative and cultural industries, or education. Gender parity drives our cultural engagement, our scholarship disbursements for higher education in France, and scientific research. I am proud of the rich and diverse set of initiatives undertaken in collaboration with our Indian partners as part of the Generation Equality Summit in Paris this summer.”
Generation Equality and UN Women:
In the powerful words of young feminists and change-makers across the globe, women and girls in all their diversities came together at the UN Conference in June 2021, to demand the realisation of an ambitious agenda set forth in the Young Feminist Manifesto at the Generation Equality Forum (GEF or the Forum). Soon after, at a local level in India, National Youth Gender Advocates, based in India, organized the India Youth Conference, foregrounded the global youth demands to a local context. The daylong consultative process prior to GEF in Paris aimed to consolidate young people’s experiences that informed the commitment seeking process from the power centre across sectors. It aimed to bring together the solutions that are driven from young people’s leadership and ownership in order to ensure their substantive participation.
Quote from Susan Ferguson, UN Women Country Representative:
One of the things the Generation Equality Forum (GEF) has been able to successfully establish is the critical participation of young feminists as an important stakeholder of the larger movement that seeks to advance gender equality commitments and ensure concrete, sustainable results for our future. The Forum process has an ambitious vision and objective to accelerate progress towards gender equality and intersectional justice. GEF clearly acknowledges the crucial role youth plays in achieving its ambitious goals. It aims to fuel powerful and lasting Action Coalitions (ACs) to achieve transformative change for generations to come. And it promises to keep the Civil Society at the heart of everything it proposes, with processes guided young feminists, placing them in the “driving seat”.