Elimination of Discrimination Against Women

A/HRC/RES/26/5No PDF available

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 3Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development, published in 2014.

What other versions does this mandate have?

7 versions · 2009–2016

This is an older version — the most recent is A/HRC/RES/32/4

2016A/HRC/RES/32/4Elimination of discrimination against womenLatestCompare with previous version
2015A/HRC/RES/29/4Elimination of discrimination against womenCompare with previous version
2014A/HRC/RES/26/5Elimination of discrimination against womenCompare with previous version
2013A/HRC/RES/23/7Elimination of discrimination against womenCompare with previous version
2012A/HRC/RES/20/6Elimination of discrimination against womenCompare with previous version

Versions are identified automatically by matching titles within the same organ (~97% accuracy on a manual audit).

What subjects does this mandate have?

11 topics

Anti-Discrimination Measures Decision-Making Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Empowerment Gender Discrimination Gender Equality Gender-Based Violence Women Women's Education Women's Employment Women's Rights

What does this mandate say?

24 operative paragraphs

Welcomes the work undertaken by the Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice, and takes note with appreciation of its report, in which it focused on discrimination against women in economic and social life;

Affirms that realizing human rights requires the full, effective and meaningful participation of women in all aspects of economic and social life, on an equal footing with men;

Calls upon States to include, as appropriate, special or positive action measures to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women in economic and social life as part of a comprehensive system-wide approach of non-discrimination and equality of opportunity and treatment;

Also calls upon States to promote the rights of women and girls and to support their empowerment by adopting, as appropriate, a coherent set of gender-responsive social and economic policies directed at the family, the workplace and the marketplace, and by addressing poverty and social exclusion in order to overcome the structural barriers and inequalities they face and thereby to ensure their long-term and sustainable participation in economic and social life;

Further calls upon States to promote reforms, the effectiveness of institutional mechanisms and good governance, and to accelerate the implementation of legal frameworks and policies directed towards achieving equality and the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and girls, including nationality laws;

Emphasizes that the prohibition of discrimination against women on grounds of sex, pregnancy, maternity, parenthood or care work should be enforced for all women in all areas of work, including in the informal sector;

Requests States to take measures to overcome the barriers to women’s economic opportunities resulting from maternity and the disproportionate burden of unpaid care work in order to permit choice by women and men as to how they allocate work and family duties and in order to enable the complementarity of work and family between women and men;

Urges States to take measures to reduce informal work for women, with a focus on female participation in economic life and by increasing women’s economic opportunities, particularly in formal employment, in order to promote gender equality;

Recommends that States support women’s entrepreneurship, including through training, the dissemination of information and the provision of credit and saving facilities, and by securing women’s equal rights over resources to ensure women’s equality and well-being;

Also recommends that States promote and protect women’s rights by providing women with access to social security over the course of their life cycle;

Calls upon States to analyse and evaluate the impact of the economic and financial crisis from a gender perspective, and to ensure that the principles of gender equality and the empowerment of woman are reflected also in State-led initiatives to sustain and expand the economic recovery, which can provide opportunities to tackle patterns of gender inequality and discrimination;

Calls for gender equality, the empowerment of women and human rights of women and girls to be reflected as a stand-alone goal and to be integrated and mainstreamed through, inter alia, targets and indicators, into all sustainable development goals in the post-2015 development agenda;

Calls upon States to take concrete steps towards eliminating all forms of discrimination against women and girls, directed to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women at all levels of economic and social decision-making processes, especially during economic and financial crises, and to engage women in State-building;

Stresses the need to accelerate efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls, including in economic and social life, such as gender-based violence and sexual harassment against women in the public arena, such as in public transport and services, workplaces, educational institutions and cyberspace, to combat impunity, and to guarantee access to appropriate civil remedies and redress that take into account multiple, intersecting and aggravated forms of discrimination;

Reaffirms the importance of the right to education as key to the empowerment of women and girls and for ensuring equality and non-discrimination, and the need for the elimination of discriminatory laws and practices that prevent girls from completing their education;

Calls upon States and encourages institutions of global economic governance and business to promote women’s equal access to decision-making positions and processes, and encourages them to appoint and promote women staff members in order to guarantee women’s full participation;

Urges Governments to recognize the important role the media can play in the elimination of gender stereotypes and, to the extent consistent with freedom of expression, increase women’s participation in and access to all forms of media, and to encourage the media to increase public awareness of the Beijing Platform for Action, the Millennium Development Goals, gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls;

Recognizes that the work done by civil society organizations, in particular independent women’s civil society organizations, is crucial to promoting full equality in all aspects of economic and social life and eliminating violence against women and girls, including women human rights defenders, and that they therefore require support for their sustainability and growth;

Calls upon all States to cooperate with and assist the Working Group in its task, to supply all necessary available information requested by it and to give serious consideration to responding favourably to its requests to visit their country to enable it to fulfil its mandate effectively;

Invites relevant United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, treaty bodies within their respective mandates and civil society actors, including non-governmental organizations, as well as the private sector, to cooperate fully with the Working Group in the fulfilment of its mandate, and requests the Working Group to continue its cooperation with the Commission on the Status of Women, including by participating in its work, and reporting, on request;

Requests the Working Group to continue to work on its thematic priorities, namely, political and public life, economic and social life, family and cultural life, and health and safety, and to dedicate specific attention to good practices that have contributed to mobilizing society as a whole, including men and boys, in the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and girls;

Takes note with appreciation of the intention of the Working Group to focus its next report on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice in family and cultural life;

Requests the Working Group, in the discharge of its mandate, to offer support to States’ initiatives to address multiple forms of discrimination against women and girls when implementing their obligations as State parties to relevant international human rights treaties with regard to civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights, and related commitments, where applicable;

Decides to continue its consideration of this issue in conformity with its annual programme of work.

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What does this mandate say?

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