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Opinion
The world will gather at United Nations Headquarters in New York for the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70), the United Nations’ largest annual forum dedicated to gender equality and women’s rights. What happens here influences laws, policies, financing and accountability across countries and generations. This year’s focus is clear: rights, justice and action for all women and girls. CSW70 will take place from March 9 to 19. Credit: United Nations
– International Women’s Day 2026 (IWD 2026), which was commemorated on March 8, under the theme, “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL women and girls”calls for action to dismantle all barriers to equal justice: discriminatory laws, weak legal protections, and harmful social practices and norms that erode the rights of women and girls. Demand an end to systemic violence and misogyny, including calls for justice for Epstein survivors.
The independent experts, acting in their individual capacity under mandates from the UN Human Rights Council, warned that the alleged acts documented in the ‘Epstein Files’ provide disturbing and credible evidence of widespread and systematic sexual abuse, trafficking and exploitation of women and girls.
The UN experts stated that “the scale, nature, systematic nature and transnational reach of these atrocities against women and girls are so serious that several of them may reasonably meet the legal threshold of crimes against humanity.” They said, “No one is too rich or too powerful to be above the law.”
Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims that “Everyone is equal before the law and is entitled, without discrimination, to equal protection of the law.” However, no nation has closed the legal gaps between men and women.
While we are told that women now have more legal rights than at any other time in history, data from 2026 reveals a devastating reality: women around the world possess only 64 percent of the legal rights of men.
Therefore, the global crisis of women’s safety is not a failure of individual morality; It is the result of structural barriers. For survivors of systemic exploitation, the deepest betrayal lies not in the absence of laws, but in the complicity embedded in the very architecture of gender.
Architecture of betrayal
We must denounce the hypocrisy that reinforces this architecture: the “socialist-feminist paradox.” The Epstein scandal exposed a troubling contradiction within elite social networks. Some influential figures build public personas based on the rhetoric of “empowering women and girls,” but privately maintain ties to predatory networks.
This contradiction becomes more striking when individuals who publicly advocate for gender equality, such as high-profile participants in initiatives like HeForShe, are linked to Epstein’s social orbit.
When prominent advocates link their “feminist” brands to the orbit of known predators, they serve as reputational shields, signaling legitimacy and security to the outside world. Young women attracted by promises of empowerment rely on these figures. They become victims of the same networks that protect those reputations.
Within this gender architecture, such actors become interior designers of impunity, dressing a house of horrors to look like a palace of progress.
Support hypocrisy
The architecture of betrayal extends to the highest levels of global governance. Jeffrey Epstein maintained a vast network of elite social and financial contacts, including politicians, business leaders and royalty, exposing how predatory networks can intersect with influential institutions.
Recent scrutiny has intensified following the release of documents related to the US Department of Justice’s investigation of Epstein, which revealed troubling communications between Emirati diplomat Hind Al-Owais and Epstein.
In early 2026, former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland also faced an investigation for alleged “aggravated corruption” and extensive email links to Epstein, while Mette-Marit, Crown Princess of Norway, publicly apologized for maintaining a friendship with him after his conviction in 2008.
Figures such as Terje Rød-Larsen, a former Norwegian diplomat and president of the International Peace Institute, also operated within the same elite circles linked to the UN and international politics that Epstein sought access to.
These are not just “errors of judgment”; They are the structural supports that allow predatory systems to persist behind the mask of elite influence and defense.
Architecture of complicity
While individuals failed, prestigious institutions provided the foundation. Big banks, Ivy League universities such as Harvard and MIT, and elite think tanks accepted Epstein’s wealth (often described as “blood money”) in exchange for social legitimacy.
These were not “spectators”; they were the infrastructure of abuse. By accepting donations from a known predator, these institutions provided the social cover that allowed vulnerable girls to continue to be cared for.
They signaled to the world – and to the victims – that a billionaire’s endowment was more valuable than the safety of a young woman.
Justice in a defective architecture
The definitive instrument of elite impunity is the statute of limitations. Within this gendered architecture of power, justice is defeated not by evidence but by calendar. Predators depend on the legal expiration of trauma, counting on time to erode memory, courage, and consequences.
UN experts urged US authorities to lift statutes of limitations preventing the prosecution of serious crimes attributed to Epstein’s criminal enterprise.
As of February 2026, new legislation such as the Virginia Law (named after Virginia Giuffre) was introduced to eliminate these time limits for survivors of sexual abuse and trafficking.
Path to accountability
Survivors of the Epstein network have broken their silence. This DIM 2026 we must break the system that allowed this silence to exist.
We know what happened. Now we must act; our demands must be absolute:
We must urge governments to use the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70) in March 2026 to commit to making tangible and measurable progress towards closing the global legal protection gap for survivors.
We must abolish statutes of limitations to ensure that time does not erase the crimes of the powerful.
We do not want “rights” that can be bought by a billionaire’s legal team, nor “justice” that is limited to a confidentiality agreement.
We must push for legislation that prohibits “secret” agreements that protect anonymous co-conspirators in trafficking cases. No one – regardless of political or social status – should be “non-prosecutable.”
We must stop using platforms as “human rights defenders” that have not fully responded to their links to predatory networks. Influence must be gained through integrity, not proximity to power.
We must remove the title of “advocate” from anyone who has traded girls’ safety for the social or financial benefits of an elite boys’ club.
We must demand that any organization – whether a bank, an Ivy League university, a laboratory, or a nonprofit – that knowingly benefits from the profits of exploitation be held legally and financially responsible as an accessory to the conspiracy.
We must institute legal requirements for institutions to disclose the sources of large private donations, with strict “investigation clauses” regarding human rights records.
We must redirect assets seized from trafficking and exploitation networks toward survivor-led healing funds and legal assistance for marginalized women.
We must ensure that justice is not a privilege; It is a fundamental human right that time cannot buy, silence or erase. We demand measures to ensure that ALL women, regardless of the status of their abuser, are equally protected under the law.
The theme of DIM 2026 “Rights. Justice. Action”. It is not a request to sit at the table; It is a demand to dismantle the table where the impunity of the elites is served.
Mohamed ShihanaA citizen of Sri Lanka, he is President of Asia Global Network and a US Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project and Equality Now on Advancing Women’s and Girls’ Rights. She is also a founding member and Coordinator of the United Nations Asia Network for Diversity and Inclusion (UN-ANDI). She is a dedicated human rights activist and a strong advocate for gender equality and the advancement of women.
IPS UN Office
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