Over 60 years ago, countries adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” That fundamental right has echoed for decades in conferences, treaties, and declarations. Almost 17 years ago, in the Platform for Action adopted in Beijing, 189 governments agreed that laws that discriminate against women undermine equality and pledged to “revoke any remaining laws that discriminate on the basis of sex.” Yet inequality, even in its most overt form, has not been vanquished.

While discrimination against women persists around the world in many forms, laws that explicitly discriminate against women demonstrate State backing of discrimination and symbolize the clear disrespect of governments for the fundamental right of women to equality and official endorsement of women as being of lesser worth than men.

In 2010, Equality Now updated its report (the Beijing +15 report) on discriminatory laws around the world, which was originally published in 1999 (the Beijing +5 report) and updated in 2004 (the Beijing +10 report).  The Beijing +15 report highlighted a sampling of sex discriminatory laws that remained in force in 36 countries around the world at the time of publication.

This petition calls on the governments of the following countries to repeal or amend the laws still highlighted in the Beijing +15 report as well as other currently applicable sex-discriminatory laws: Afghanistan, Algeria, the Bahamas, Bahrain, Bolivia, Cameroon, Chile, China, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Latvia, Lebanon, Madagascar, Mali, Monaco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, and Yemen.