Women First Run: For Women, Every Right

The event, organized by the Great Ethiopia Run in connection with the International Women’s Day, brought together more than 16,000 women and girls.

This year, the UN partnered with the GER to promote the theme “For Every Woman, Every Right” and mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

The Beijing Declaration, adopted at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, is a landmark global commitment to advancing gender equality and women’s rights. It outlines a comprehensive platform for action across 12 critical areas, including education, healthcare, economic participation, political representation, and ending violence against women. It was a pledge to ensure that every woman and girl—regardless of background, ability, or circumstance—could live free from discrimination and violence.

Despite three decades of progress, challenges persist. Women continue to bear the brunt of humanitarian crises, whether due to war, displacement, or climate disasters. Gender-based violence, unequal economic opportunities, and systemic discrimination still hold many women back. Young women and girls continue to bear the highest burden of HIV. Women with disabilities face even greater barriers—barriers to education, employment, healthcare, and basic services. Too often, their voices go unheard.

“For Every Woman, Every Right,” is a powerful reminder that the fight for gender equality is far from over. The UN used the Women First Run as an important platform that brings together thousands of women and inspire millions of women to come forward and claim and advance their rights. 

The United Nations urged action in three critical areas to advance of the rights of every woman and girl::

1. Advance women’s and girls’ rights: Fight relentlessly for women’s and girls’ full range of human rights, including the fundamental right to health, and challenge all forms of violence, discrimination, and exploitation.
2. Promote gender equality: Address systemic barriers, dismantle patriarchy, transform entrenched inequities, and elevate the voices of marginalized women and girls, including young people, to ensure inclusivity and empowerment.
3. Foster empowerment: Empowerment is more than a word; it is action. It is ensuring that women have access to education, economic opportunities, and leadership roles. It is ending gender-based violence. It is standing together, as we do today, in solidarity and determination.