Was US the only nation to vote against UN resolution promoting women’s equality?

In September 2026, as delegations gathered for the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, a claim (archived) circulated online that the U.S. was the only opposing nation when the U.N. passed a resolution by a vote of 37-1 to promote women’s equality.  

One Facebook user who shared the claim wrote, “The UN passed a resolution by a vote of 37-1 promoting women’s equality. The one opposing vote… the United States. Remember this.”

The claim also circulated on X (archived) and Threads (archived). Snopes readers contacted us, asking if the claim was true.

The claim was mostly true, but posts were misleading in two important ways. First, the vote in question did not take place in September 2026 but months earlier, in March. Second, the vote in question was not a resolution but a different type of procedure called an agreed conclusion.

In March 2026, the U.S. was the only opposing party in a 37-1 vote to adopt the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women’s agreed conclusions for its 70th session.

The CSW exists to promote “gender equality, the rights and the empowerment of women.” The U.S. opposed its agreed conclusions, meaning recommendations for member states to work towards, that sought to ensure and strengthen access to justice for women and girls.

Agreed conclusions are not the same as U.N. resolutions, which are “formal expressions of the opinion or will of UN organs.” The CSW also adopts resolutions in a separate process from agreed conclusions. 

What the US voted against

The agreed conclusions for the CSW’s 70th session were titled, “Ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls, including by promoting inclusive and equitable legal systems, eliminating discriminatory laws, policies and practices, and addressing structural barriers.”

The document “urged” governments and other bodies to take a series of actions to “strengthen access to justice for all women and girls by 2030, while recognizing the specific needs of women and girls” (Page 3).

The document included broad, wide-ranging recommendations, such as (Page 3):

(b) Take all measures necessary to ensure that every woman and girl can seek and obtain an effective remedy from competent, independent and impartial justice institutions when their rights are violated, without discrimination of any kind;

It also included more specific obligations, such as (Page 6): 

(r) Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences;

According to the U.N.’s live coverage of the March 9 discussion and vote on the agreed conclusions, the U.S. delegation voted against the document in part because of its language about access to sexual and reproductive health.

U.N. Ambassador Dan Negrea said at the time that his delegation could not support a text that included:

… ambiguous language promoting gender ideology, vague unqualified commitments to sexual and reproductive health that can be interpreted as implying abortion rights, censorship language or broad language on regulation of AI.

Two months before the 70th session of the CSW, in January 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from U.N. Women, the CSW’s parent entity, through an executive order.

Negrea noted this withdrawal during the CSW session, saying that the U.S. thought U.N. Women “engaged in recklessly promoting gender ideology and abortion.”

The U.N. reported that the agreed conclusions passed by 37-1. The U.S. was the only opposing vote and six countries abstained.

Later on in the CSW session, the U.S. did vote against a resolution, titled, “Women, the girl child and HIV and AIDS” that called upon governments to “intensify efforts to reduce the particularly high levels of HIV infection among women and girls” (Page 4).

Forty-three nations voted in favor of the resolution and the U.S. was the only nation to vote against it. The U.N. representative for the U.S. reportedly voted against the resolution due to concerns about “terms and formulations relating to sexual and reproductive health.”

For further reading, Snopes has previously reported on other claims about the United Nations.

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