UN for Men Too
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UN for Men Too · article
The anniversary and the twenty-eight words.
On 28 September the UN marks twenty-five years of the Durban Declaration. We counted the text it celebrates, and set it beside twenty-eight words from 2004.
On 28 September 2026 the United Nations holds a high-level meeting in New York for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, its framework against racism. This register takes no position on that framework. It records what can be counted, and two things about this anniversary can be.
What gets an anniversary
A meeting with a date, a hall and a theme.
On 28 September 2026 the General Assembly convenes a high-level meeting at United Nations Headquarters in New York to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. The text was adopted in 2001 at the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.
Mobilizing global public support for the full and effective implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action.
The meeting is on the Assembly's published programme for its eighty-first session and in the President of the General Assembly's letter on the September high-level meetings. Both are linked below.
What the celebrated text counts
Not a reading between the lines. A count, under rules fixed before the counting started.
The official text published by the UN human rights office runs to 341 paragraphs: 122 in the Declaration and 219 in the Programme of Action. It was extracted twice, by two independent methods, with words broken across lines rejoined, and counted as whole words. The two runs agree on every number.
The twelve mentions of men decompose without remainder. Seven sit inside the pairing 'women and men'. Three sit inside 'men, women and children', in the paragraphs on slavery and on living conditions. Two name men as the level women are to be made equal with: 'on an equal footing with men' and 'equal rights with men'.
So the count supports one sentence and no more: nowhere in the 341 paragraphs is a problem named as belonging to men or boys as a group.
A count is not a criticism. Durban is a text about racism, and its authors chose its words for that purpose. It is counted here because it is the text the United Nations has chosen to mark, and because of the words below.
The twenty-eight words
A UN text that did name men and boys, and what was attached to it.
On 12 March 2004 the Commission on the Status of Women adopted agreed conclusions titled 'The role of men and boys in achieving gender equality'. The document is overwhelmingly about bringing men into the work for women's equality. In a subordinate clause in its second paragraph, it records something else:
while men and boys sometimes face discriminatory barriers and practices, they can and do make contributions to gender equality
Twenty-two years later, what that clause describes has no entity, no focal point and no indicator attached to it. The UN's list of international days holds fourteen for women and girls and none for men and boys. This register documents each of those absences with its source, and records absence as absence, never as zero.
Two texts, one organisation
Set side by side, without adjectives.
A text adopted in 2001, in which no problem is named as belonging to men or boys, is marked on 28 September by a high-level meeting whose theme is its full implementation.
A text adopted in 2004, in which the UN recorded that men and boys sometimes face discriminatory barriers, has no entity, no focal point and no indicator to carry it.
Both halves of that sentence are held here with their primary sources. What anyone makes of them is theirs to decide.
This page takes no position on the Durban Declaration or on the fight against racism, and nothing on it proposes taking anything from anyone. The finding is a count and an absence, each with its source.
Every figure can be checked without trusting this site: the official text is linked, its hash is published, and every context the count rests on is held verbatim.
There is a UN Women. There is no UN Men. This is the ask, and it takes one tap.
— voices so far · one tap, anonymous, no signup
Questions this article answers
Is this an attack on the Durban Declaration?
No. It is a text about racism and it is counted as one. The count is published because the UN has chosen to mark this text, and a register of what the UN counts and funds records what the texts it marks contain.
Why count words at all?
Because a count cannot be argued with the way a reading can. The rules were fixed first, the text was extracted twice, and every one of the thirteen passages mentioning men or boys is held word for word, so anyone can recount.
Who wrote this?
Mikal Steen Monslaup, independently. No organisation reviewed or approved it.
What would change this page
A recount that gives a different number, a passage we missed, or evidence of an entity, focal point or indicator attached to the 2004 words. Corrections are published, dated, on the sources page.
The five documents this rests on
All five are public and are linked here directly rather than described. Read them yourself. That is the point of putting them at the top of their own section instead of at the bottom of a reference list.
Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, official publication The complete text counted on this page: 122 paragraphs of Declaration and 219 of Programme of Action. Held in the project archive, sha256 4b23ce1259fa1d444f4f7850fb64ef6d228eeddada038aa8079081660965e550. 2001, published by OHCHR Open it on ohchr.org → High-level meeting on the 25th anniversary of the Durban Declaration The meeting page, with date, venue and theme. 28 September 2026 Open it on indico.un.org → President of the General Assembly, letter on the September 2026 high-level meetings The Assembly's own notice of the meeting. May 2026 Open it on un.org → CSW 48, agreed conclusions: The role of men and boys in achieving gender equality The endorsed text, quoted from paragraph 2. 12 March 2004 Open it on un.org → UN list of international days and weeks Fourteen days for women and girls, none for men and boys. re-checked 2 September 2026 Open it on un.org →Source notes and accuracy flags
This section is part of the article, not an appendix to it. It records where each figure came from, what was checked, and every place where the honest version of a claim is weaker than the version that would have read better.
Source notes
- The counts are this project's own: two pdftotext extractions of the official file (default and layout modes), hyphenated line breaks rejoined, case-insensitive whole-word matching. By part, Declaration and Programme of Action: women 11 and 50, gender 4 and 21, men 4 and 8, boys 0 and 1.
- The meeting, the counts and the 2004 words are registered facts on the sources page (reg-107, reg-049, reg-003, reg-001), each with its URL.
Every figure in this article also appears in the register, with its exact value and primary source, and any correction to it will appear in the corrections log with the date it was made.
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