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The overriding message of the Conference was that the issues addressed in the Platform for Action are global and universal. Changes in values, attitudes, practices and priorities at all levels are necessary to combat deeply entrenched attitudes and practices perpetuate inequality and discrimination against women, in public and private life, in all parts of the world. The Conference signaled a clear commitment to international norms and standards of equality between men and women; that measures to protect and promote the human rights of women and girl-children as an integral part of universal human rights must underlie all action; and that institutions at all levels must be reoriented to expedite implementation.
Other references to women's land rights in the Declaration and Platform for Action: paragraphs 35, 51, 55, 58 (m) and (n), 60 (f), 61 (b), 165 (e), 166 (c), 256 (a) and (f).
Also see the 5-, 10-, and 15-year appraisal of implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.
In the Beijing Platform for Action paragraph 61 (b), governments agreed to ‘undertake legislative and administrative reforms to give women full and equal access to economic resources, including the right to inheritance and to ownership of land and other property, credit, natural resources and appropriate technologies.”
The UN convened the Fourth World Conference on Women on 4-15 September 1995 in Beijing, China. 189 governments and more than 5,000 representatives from 2,100 non-governmental organizations participated, the resulting documents, adopted by consensus, were The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The Declaration embodies the international community's committment to the advancement of women and to the implementation of the Platform for Action, ensuring that a gender perspective is reflected in all policies and programmes at the national, regional and international levels (Governments and the UN agreed to promote "gender mainstreaming" in policies and programmes).