Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and Girls

A/HRC/RES/38/1View PDF

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the Human Rights Council, under agenda item 3Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development, published in 2018.

What other versions does this mandate have?

5 versions · 2018–2024

This is an older version — the most recent is A/HRC/RES/56/22

2024A/HRC/RES/56/22Elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and girlsLatestCompare with previous version
2022A/HRC/RES/50/18Elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and girlsCompare with previous version
2020A/HRC/RES/44/17Elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and girlsCompare with previous version
2019A/HRC/RES/41/6Elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and girlsCompare with previous version
2018A/HRC/RES/38/1Elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and girls

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

What subjects does this mandate have?

7 topics

Anti-Discrimination Measures Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Empowerment Gender Discrimination Gender Equality Girls Women's Rights

What does this mandate say?

35 operative paragraphs

Calls upon States:

To ratify or accede to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and to consider ratifying or acceding to the Optional Protocol to the Convention as a matter of particular priority;

To limit the extent of any reservations, and to formulate them as precisely and narrowly as possible to ensure that no reservations are incompatible with the object and purpose of the Convention;

To implement the Convention through appropriate legislation, regulation, policies and programmes;

To cooperate fully with the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and other human rights treaty bodies, and to implement its recommendations, as appropriate;

Takes note of the work undertaken by the Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice, including its report, and calls upon States to take steps to promote reforms as appropriate and to implement legal frameworks and policies directed to achieving gender equality and the prevention and elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and girls, taking into consideration the good practices identified therein and the recommendations of the Working Group, and also those made by the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, other States in the context of the universal periodic review and other relevant human rights mechanisms, with a view to ensuring the realization of human rights of all women and girls;

Calls upon States:

To repeal all laws that exclusively or disproportionately criminalize the actions or behaviour of women and girls, and laws and policies that discriminate against them, based on any grounds, including any custom, tradition or cultural or religious interpretation contrary to the international obligation to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women and girls;

To ensure that their international obligations on gender equality and non-discrimination are incorporated at all levels of legal frameworks, including in relation to women’s and girls’ access to justice, redress and effective remedies;

To consider reviewing all proposed and existing legislation in accordance with international human rights obligations and a gender-responsive perspective, involving, when necessary, independent experts, national human rights institutions, women human rights defenders, women’s and girls’ community-based organizations, feminist groups and youth-led organizations, and other relevant stakeholders;

To work towards establishing or strengthening inclusive and gender-responsive social protection systems, including floors, to ensure full access to nationally appropriate social protection for all without discrimination of any kind, and to take measures to progressively achieve higher levels of protection, including by facilitating the transition from informal to formal work;

To promote legislation, regulation, policies and programmes that facilitate all women’s economic empowerment, ensure equal pay for equal work or work of equal value and prohibit all forms of discrimination, including in the workplace and in education, such as discrimination against women and girls based on pregnancy, maternity, marital status, age, race or gender, as well as violence and harassment against them, including sexual harassment and harassment in digital contexts and online spaces;

Urges States:

To ensure women’s and girls’ equal enjoyment of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights through the prohibition of and appropriate action to eliminate all forms of discrimination by all actors, State and non-State alike;

To remove barriers, whether political, legal, cultural, economic, institutional or religious, preventing women’s full, equal and effective participation in all fields and in leadership at all levels of decision-making in public and private sectors;

To modify social and cultural patterns of conduct with a view to preventing and eliminating in the public and private spheres patriarchal and gender stereotypes, negative social norms, attitudes and behaviours, and unequal power relations that view women and girls as subordinate to men and boys and that underlie and perpetuate discrimination and violence against women and girls;

To support gender equality and women’s and girls’ rights, including within families, through long-term awareness-raising initiatives, especially education and public awareness-raising, including through the media and online, the incorporation of curricula on all women’s rights into teacher training courses, including the prevention of sexual and gender-based violence, and ensuring universal access to evidence-based comprehensive sexuality education;

To provide training on a rights-based gender analysis for duty holders in all spheres and sectors and meaningful collaboration with civil society, including women’s and community-based organizations, feminist groups, women human rights defenders and girls’ and youth-led organizations;

To support tripartite collaboration among Governments, employers and women workers and their organizations, including trade unions or other representative organizations, to prevent and remove barriers to gender equality and the empowerment of women in the workplace;

Calls upon States to implement policies and actions directed:

To eradicate poverty and to combat the feminization of poverty, to ensure the full and equal participation of women in the design and implementation of and follow-up to poverty eradication and development policies and programmes, to promote employment and decent work, and to promote the participation of women at all levels and sectors of the economy;

To recognize, reduce and redistribute women’s and girls’ disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic work, including caring for children, family members with disabilities and older family members, by promoting policies and initiatives that support the reconciliation of work and family life and the equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, to take steps to implement family-oriented policies to achieve a family-work balance and to facilitate the transition of women informal workers, including those engaged in informal paid care and domestic work, to the formal economy, and to extend rights to non-discrimination, paid parental leave and childcare provisions;

To enact legislation and undertake reforms as appropriate to realize the equal rights of women and men, and, where applicable, girls and boys, to natural, economic and productive resources, including access to, use of, and ownership of and control over land, property and inheritance rights, including diverse types of land tenure, appropriate new technology and financial services, such as credit, banking and finance, including but not limited to microfinance, as well as equal access to justice and legal assistance in this regard, and ensure women’s legal capacity and equal rights with men’s to conclude contracts, in particular of groups of women who are subject to multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination;

To promote substantive equality by adopting the measures necessary to prevent, diminish and eliminate patriarchal and gender stereotypes that cause or perpetuate substantive or de facto discrimination, including, where appropriate, the adoption of temporary special measures, including for gender-specific needs and equal enjoyment benefits;

To encourage and facilitate women’s entrepreneurship, including by improving access to financing and investment opportunities, tools of trade, business development and training, through, inter alia, the mobilization of adequate financial resources, capacity-building and the transfer of technology on mutually agreed terms, in order to increase the share of trade and procurement from women’s enterprises, including micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises, cooperatives and self-help groups in both the public and private sectors, and to promote girls’ and young women’s access to training for business development;

To prevent and eliminate all forms of violence and sexual harassment against women and girls in all settings, including public and private life, means of public transport, schools and workplaces, particularly workplaces that are largely male-dominated or where stereotyped roles prevail, by, inter alia, implementing effective violence-prevention and response activities, including by facilitating effective action after sexual harassment has been committed by holding perpetrators to account and providing victims with access to remedies and protection, engaging men and boys, educating children from a young age about the importance of treating all people with dignity and respect, and by designing educational programmes and training materials that support gender equality, human rights, respectful relationships and non-violent behaviour;

To ensure access to justice and accountability mechanisms for the effective implementation and enforcement of laws aimed at preventing and eliminating all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls, in all contexts, including by informing women and girls about their rights under relevant laws and by improving legal infrastructure and removing all barriers to access to legal counselling, assistance and remedies;

To ensure the equal enjoyment by women and girls of quality education, including at all levels human rights education and training, in a safe environment, leading to effective learning outcomes, thereby facilitating their access to information and communications technology and science, and technology, engineering and mathematics education in order to promote their empowerment and to allow them to develop the skills, information and knowledge necessary to support their labour market entry;

Encourages States to prioritize the allocation of funds, both internationally and domestically, to support women’s and girls’ full and equal enjoyment of all human rights, including by mainstreaming gender equality in the process of conceiving, planning, approving, executing, analysing and ordering budgets, to ensure that their legal and policy commitments bear results, and to implement active and sustained measures to promote good practices in the eradication of discrimination and the promotion of women’s and girls’ empowerment, including measures focused on attitudinal and behavioural change that cultivate an environment in which good practices in achieving gender equality in law and in practice can thrive;

Urges States to promote and protect sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, in accordance with the Beijing Platform for Action and the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the outcome documents of their review conferences, and to respect, protect and fulfil the right of every woman to have full control over and decide freely and responsibly on all matters relating to her sexuality and sexual and reproductive health, free from discrimination, coercion and violence, including through the removal of legal barriers and the development and enforcement of policies, good practices and legal frameworks that respect bodily autonomy and guarantee universal access to sexual and reproductive health, services, evidence-based information and education, including for family planning, safe and effective methods of modern contraception, emergency contraception, prevention programmes for adolescent pregnancy, maternal health care, such as skilled birth assistance and emergency obstetric care, safe abortion in accordance with international human rights law and where not against national law, the prevention and treatment of reproductive tract infections, sexually transmitted infections, HIV and reproductive cancers and the integration of sexual and reproductive health into national health strategies and programmes;

Also urges States to develop, support and protect an enabling environment for the full participation of women’s civil society organizations and women human rights defenders in the creation, design and implementation of all legislation and policies relevant to substantive gender equality, as well as when adopting and implementing good practices conducive for the sustainable application of equality and empowerment measures for women and girls, and also to consider the application of the good practices framework for the creation and maintenance of a safe and enabling environment for civil society developed in the report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, with a gender-responsive perspective that takes into account the unique position and challenges faced by women human rights defenders;

Calls upon all States to continue to develop and enhance standards and methodologies at the national and international levels to improve the collection, analysis and dissemination of gender statistics and sex-, disability- and age-disaggregated data by strengthening national statistical capacity, including by enhancing the mobilization, from all sources, of financial and technical assistance for enabling developing countries to systematically design, collect and ensure access to high-quality, reliable and timely data disaggregated by sex, age, disability, income and other characteristics relevant in national contexts;

Also 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, in particular the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, the treaty bodies and other special procedures, 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 to engage with the Commission on the Status of Women, including by participating in its work and formally reporting;

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

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Who created this mandate?

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