Accelerating Efforts to Eliminate All Forms of Violence Against Women and Girls Preventing and Responding to Violence Against Women and Girls in the World of Work

A/HRC/RES/41/17View 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 2019.

What subjects does this mandate have?

13 topics

Administration of Justice Anti-Discrimination Measures Crime Prevention Gender Discrimination Gender-Based Violence Girls Human Rights Policy Reproductive Health Special Rapporteurs Women Workers Women's Employment Women's Rights Workers' Rights

What does this mandate say?

34 operative paragraphs

Expresses outrage at the persistence and pervasiveness of all forms of violence against women and girls worldwide;

Condemns in the strongest possible terms all forms of violence against women and girls, including in the world of work;

Recognizes that domestic violence is not a private family matter and must be eliminated;

Expresses deep concern that all forms of discrimination, intimidation, harassment and violence, including in the world of work, prevent women and girls from fully enjoying their human rights and fundamental freedoms, which hinders their full, equal, effective and meaningful participation in economic, social, cultural, civil and political spheres, and is an impediment to achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls;

Recognizes the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and the right to the enjoyment of just and favourable conditions of work, which includes, inter alia, having access to safe and healthy working conditions;

Reaffirms that human rights include the right to have control over and to decide freely and responsibly on matters relating to sexuality and to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health, free from coercion, discrimination and violence, including full respect for dignity, integrity and bodily autonomy;

Stresses the need to address multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, which place women and girls at greater risk of exploitation, violence and abuse, and to implement measures to prevent and eliminate gender stereotypes, negative social norms, attitudes and behaviours that cause or perpetuate gender-based discrimination and violence against women and girls;

Recognizes that a proactive and reactive multipronged approach, working with all relevant parties, is required to eliminate violence in the world of work, including education, training and media campaigns and promoting respect, accountability and non-discrimination in the world of work, and that actions to prevent and respond to violence in the world of work can have a positive impact in reducing violence against women and girls outside the world of work;

Encourages national legislative authorities and political parties to adopt codes of conduct and to establish reporting mechanisms, or revise existing ones, indicating that they have zero tolerance for all forms of violence against women in politics, including in digital contexts;

Calls upon States to take immediate and effective action to prevent all forms of violence against women and girls by:

Developing, reviewing and strengthening inclusive policies, including by allocating adequate resources to address the historical, structural and underlying causes, including unequal power relations and gender stereotypes, negative social norms, attitudes and behaviours, and risk factors of violence against women and girls, and ensuring that laws and policies are harmonized to address widespread violence against women and girls and are implemented in compliance with their international human rights obligations;

Ensuring the early, full, effective and meaningful participation of women and girls, including victims and survivors of violence, in the development and implementation of gender-responsive national policies, legislation, action plans, programmes, projects and strategies to eliminate violence against women and girls in the world of work, creating monitoring and accountability mechanisms to ensure implementation of gender-responsive policies and regulations, and analysing the gender impact of such policies in consultation and collaboration with women’s and civil society organizations and gender equality advocates;

Supporting initiatives undertaken by, inter alia, relevant international and non-governmental organizations, civil society actors, the private sector, social media companies, digital technology companies, faith and community groups, religious leaders, politicians, parliamentarians, journalists and other media workers, human rights defenders, including women human rights defenders, indigenous leaders and groups, labour unions, girls’ and youth-led organizations and other relevant actors, as part of their efforts to develop targeted and accessible responses, programmes and policies, including by allocating adequate resources aimed at promoting gender equality and at preventing, responding to and protecting women and girls from all forms of violence;

Urging employers to prevent violence in the workplace and to protect the safety and health of employees as part of their duty of care by adopting and implementing an inclusive policy on violence prevention with the meaningful and effective participation of employees and their representatives, establishing processes for employees to share information in confidence, identifying and mitigating risks of all forms of violence, including in digital contexts, and providing information and training to all employees and managers on the prevention of violence;

Developing and implementing educational programmes and teaching materials that raise awareness about violence in the world of work, including through evidence-based comprehensive sexuality education, consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, that explains consent, respect for boundaries and what constitutes unacceptable behaviour, inter alia, sexual harassment and gender-based violence, and promotes the development of respectful relationships in the world of work based on gender equality and human rights;

Enacting and enforcing the necessary legislative or other measures, with the full, effective and meaningful participation of relevant stakeholders, including employers, workers, unions and civil society organizations, to prevent and eliminate violence in the world of work, to end impunity and to ensure effective reparations, including to promote re-entry into the labour market for victims and survivors of violence;

Adopting or strengthening measures to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of all women and girls, including those engaged in unpaid work, working in the informal sector and in conflict and post-conflict settings, and domestic and migrant workers, to prevent discrimination and violence in the world of work;

Developing and implementing national criminal justice legislation, policies and programmes that take into account the important role and specific needs of women and girls, and promoting gender-responsive measures in crime prevention and protection policies;

Also calls upon States to take immediate and effective action to respond to all forms of violence against women and girls, and to support and protect all victims and survivors by:

Holding perpetrators to account and eliminating impunity for all forms of violence against women and girls;

Ensuring that legislation allows for the timely and effective investigation, prosecution, including ex officio prosecution, sanction and redress of violence against women and girls;

Publicly condemning all forms of violence against women and girls, including through media and information campaigns;

Taking measures to ensure that all workplaces are free from violence and discrimination, including sexual and gender-based violence, harassment and discrimination, including through regulatory and oversight frameworks and reforms, independent review mechanisms, processes and mechanisms for victims, survivors, witnesses and whistle-blowers to share information and report violence, collective agreements and codes of conduct, including appropriate disciplinary measures, protocols and procedures, and referral of cases of violence to health and psychosocial services for treatment and to police for investigation, as well as through awareness-raising and capacity-building in the broader public and in the world of work, in collaboration with employers, unions and workers;

Promoting and protecting sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, including for victims and survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in the world of work, by developing and enforcing policies and legal frameworks, and strengthening health systems that make quality comprehensive sexual and reproductive health-care services, information and education universally accessible and available, including, inter alia, emergency contraception and obstetric care, post-exposure prophylaxis for HIV infection and safe abortion where not against national law;

Providing victims and survivors of violence in the world of work with effective remedies, including relief support and legal, medical, psychological and confidential counselling services and access to reasonable and necessary leave to participate in legal processes, receive medical treatment or make arrangements for their safety, and relevant, comprehensive and victim/survivor-centred legal protection in a gender-responsive manner, including protection of victims and survivors from secondary victimization and protection of victims, survivors, witnesses and whistle-blowers from reprisals for reporting violence in the world of work;

Encouraging the development and establishment of counselling and rehabilitative services to bring about changes in the attitudes and behaviours of perpetrators of violence against women and girls, and promoting research on counselling and rehabilitation efforts so as to prevent the recurrence of such violence;

Encouraging business enterprises, in the effective implementation of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, to create gender-responsive policies and transparent and effective processes for reporting violence in the world of work, including protection of victims, survivors, witnesses and whistle-blowers from reprisals;

Supporting civil society initiatives aimed at promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, and preventing, responding to and protecting all women and girls from all forms of violence;

Strengthening or establishing systems to regularly collect, analyse and publish statistical data disaggregated by sex, age, disability and other relevant characteristics on complaints about all forms of gender-based violence against women and girls;

Invites States Members of the International Labour Organization to ratify its Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (No. 190);

Welcomes the panel discussion on violence against women in the world of work, held during the annual full-day discussion on women’s human rights at the forty-first session of the Human Rights Council, and requests the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to present a summary report on the annual discussion to the Council at its forty-fourth session;

Decides to extend the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, as set out by the Human Rights Council in its resolution 32/19 of 1 July 2016, for a period of three years;

Encourages relevant United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, in particular the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, the United Nations trust fund in support of actions to eliminate violence against women, the treaty bodies and the special procedure mandate holders, within their respective mandates, and civil society actors, including non-governmental organizations, as well as the private sector, to cooperate fully with the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, in the fulfilment of her mandate;

Decides to continue its consideration of the issue of the elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls as a matter of high priority, in conformity with its programme of work, at its forty-seventh session.

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Who created this mandate?

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