Background: The International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership (ICBP) is a long-standing collaboration between high-income countries with largely publicly funded health systems. In 2021, the ICBP Inequalities Network was established to examine how cancer inequalities are defined, measured, governed, and acted upon across partner jurisdictions. Despite equity being a central commitment in global health policy, structurally underserved populations, including Indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, migrants, older adults, people with disabilities, and those facing socioeconomic or geographic disadvantage, continue to experience poorer outcomes across the cancer continuum. While inequalities describe observed differences, an equity lens frames these differences as avoidable, unjust, and requiring policy action.

Objectives: To synthesise cross-jurisdictional insights from the ICBP Inequalities Network and develop consensus-based position statements on how equity can be operationalised within cancer data governance, policy, and international benchmarking.

Methods: We conducted a qualitative, comparative analysis of Inequalities Network activities, including a cross-jurisdictional data landscape survey, virtual discussions, and pre-meeting questionnaires undertaken between 2021 and 2023. Data were analysed using iterative categorisation, combining deductive coding informed by established equity frameworks with inductive thematic analysis. Consensus-based position statements were developed through cyclical dialogue across jurisdictions.

Results: Across jurisdictions, equity is widely endorsed but unevenly enacted, often constrained by fragmented data infrastructures, inconsistent sociodemographic definitions, and governance arrangements that marginalise structurally underserved populations.

Findings are synthesised into five domains that inform consensus position statements: (1) putting equity into practice; (2) data, governance, and sharing what works; (3) defining and measuring success; (4) lessons for emergency preparedness; and (5) shared learning and comparison. These statements emphasise actionable steps beginning with operationalising equity by explicitly defining whether systems aim to improve outcomes for groups with the worst health, narrow gaps between groups, or improve gradients across populations. This is supported by standardising core sociodemographic concepts, publishing definitions and linkage rules, and adopting a minimum inequalities dataset with locally relevant adaptations. Second, data governance is strengthened through harmonisation and federated analyses, recognition of comparability limits, and transparent governance and data sovereignty that enable community oversight and use. Third, success is assessed through co-designed metrics that span system capability and processes, population cancer outcomes, and community-defined experiences, ensuring alignment between system performance and lived experience. Fourth, emergency preparedness prioritises equity through advance planning with equity triggers, actions co-designed with the most affected communities, protection of capacity in high-need areas, and real-time monitoring of services and outcomes to identify emerging gaps while scaling effective interventions. Finally, international comparison is positioned as a learning tool that supports identification of transferable models and methods, and enables testing of which inequality metrics can be meaningfully harmonised across jurisdictions.

Conclusions/implications: Reducing cancer inequalities and advancing cancer equity requires moving beyond aspirational commitments toward governance structures that embed equity as a core dimension of system performance. International benchmarking initiatives can function as equity infrastructures when they prioritise community partnership, methodological transparency, and shared learning across jurisdictions. These findings provide practical direction for policymakers, cancer agencies, registry leaders, and international benchmarking initiatives seeking to embed equity within the cancer care systems.