From Tokenism to Transformation: Young African Feminists Reclaiming Multilateral Spaces

Our demands were unapologetic, especially calls for ending unpaid labor and gender-based violence, securing comprehensive SRHR, including abortion rights as well as providing mental health care and digital protections while institutionalizing co-leadership in political decision-making.

Following the adoption of the Manifesto, Nalafem worked with feminists to hold governments and the multiple stakeholders accountable to their GEF commitments, especially to financing young women organizations to deliver these commitments. 

Four years later, young feminists are not just making demands, they are writing laws, leading ministries, running for office, and occupying the space they deserve. We have moved from the politics of inclusion to the politics of ownership. Energized by Gen Z and in the continued spirit of bridging past and present generational divides, the work of Nalafem has been enhanced to take bolder steps and strategies. 

However, in every multilateral space from the UN General Assembly to the Commission on the Status of Women, the barriers facing young women remain stubbornly familiar. Too often, invited for visibility rather than influence, young feminists' presence valued for optics, but excluded from actual decision-making. Commitments to gender equality are made in high-level halls, limited enforceable accountability, allowing governments and institutions to speak boldly while acting timidly. 

Engagement continues to be concentrated in capital cities especially New York and urban centers, leaving refugee women, rural activists, and those without access to travel, visas or technology systematically excluded from the conversation. Even when young feminists claim space, they face backlash. Offline, this takes the form of event disruptions, intimidation, and harassment. Online, it manifests in coordinated attacks, digital abuse, and even the sabotage of virtual meetings. 

Yet, despite these entrenched challenges, progress is not absent. More governments are beginning to recognize young women as experts, feminist funds emerged to support youth-led organizations, and sustained advocacy has secured incremental structural reforms. But for grassroots feminists on the frontlines, progress that is “slow” is not neutral, it is a delay that costs lives, erodes trust, and risks losing entire generations to cycles of exclusion.

We have engaged in conversations with the senior women who led the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Something that has remained consistent, which we write about in a chapter titled “The Journey to Gender Equality: Mapping the Implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action,” published by the University for Peace, is that the memory of African women leading multilateral processes over the years gets erased or overwritten with generalized language of ‘all women's success.’ This erasure of efforts and impact has consistently fed into the othering and marginalization of Africa and African women from formal multilateral negotiations, relegating them in side events.

In Beijing, African women were not only at side events, they were in government delegations, influencing text, securing commitments. Today, we see more African women confined to civil society delegations without decision-making power.

The rise of digital tools has made it easier for African women to strategize across borders, connect movements, and secure seats in established advocacy spaces such as NGO CSW, the Women’s Major Group, and the Women’s Rights Caucus. These gains reflect the legacy of past movements that fought to ensure African women’s presence in global feminist coalitions. Yet, while these spaces were built for collective advocacy, many have become heavily gatekept and overly technical. The specialized language, procedural complexity, and resource demands now act as barriers, effectively locking out grassroots groups and young feminist organizations whose voices and experiences are essential to shaping truly inclusive gender justice agendas.

In conversations with the senior women leaders of the Beijing conference, we hear vivid stories of the deep transnational solidarity that once bound women from Africa, Latin America, and Asia together. They remind us that in Beijing, alliances were forged across continents with a shared clarity of purpose. Today, despite unprecedented access to digital tools, movements within the Global Majority have never been so fragmented. Regional blocs often work in isolation, with cross-regional engagement happening more readily with the Global Minority than with each other. This disconnection is not accidental, it is reinforced by funding models that privilege Global Minority–Global Majority partnerships, while neglecting to invest in the South–South alliances that once formed the backbone of global feminist solidarity.

Feminist solidarity is the result of deliberate choices, shared political commitments, and a refusal to let geography, language, or identity divide us. Across movements and regions, certain strategies have proven essential in sustaining this solidarity over time.

At the heart of it is intergenerational co-leadership. Solidarity deepens when elders and younger feminists exchange stories and share power in shaping strategies, influencing policy, and leading convenings. In Nalafem, this has meant inviting Beijing veterans like Gertrude Mongella and Achola Pala to strategize alongside Gen Z leaders, ensuring that historical memory fuels bold, contemporary tactics.

A second pillar is shared political frameworks. Tools like the Africa Young Women Beijing+25 Manifesto and FEM (Foster, Enable, Mobilize) have provided a common language and vision that unite activists across countries. These frameworks make it possible to hold governments accountable to agreed priorities while allowing for adaptation to local realities.

Solidarity also depends on participatory and inclusive organizing. This means moving beyond statements crafted in elite circles to create processes that center rural women, refugee leaders, and democracy activists as co-authors of the agenda. Barazas, feminist assemblies, and grassroots consultations have been critical spaces where ownership is built from the ground up.