Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and Girls

A/HRC/RES/56/22View 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 2024.

What other versions does this mandate have?

5 versions · 2018–2024

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?

6 topics

Anti-Discrimination Measures Gender Discrimination Gender Equality Gender-Based Violence Girls Women's Rights

What does this mandate say?

51 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, in accordance with the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties;

To implement the Convention through appropriate legislation, regulation, policies and programmes, including in relation to women’s and girls’ access to justice, redress and effective remedies;

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 discrimination against women and girls, including its recommendations to States with regard to their international obligations to support substantive equality by adopting the appropriate measures, including temporary special measures, necessary to prevent, redress and eliminate patriarchal and gender stereotypes that cause or perpetuate discrimination in all spheres of life;

Urges States:

To review, modify or repeal all laws and policies that exclusively or disproportionately target or criminalize the actions or behaviour of women and girls, and laws and policies that discriminate against them on the basis of any grounds, including any custom, tradition or misuse of culture or religion, and to create accountability mechanisms to end impunity and prevent, eliminate and remedy the discriminatory application of the law;

To consider reviewing all proposed and existing legislation in accordance with their international human rights obligations, using an intersectional approach that takes into consideration, inter alia, age, race, gender, disability or other status and the historical, social, economic, cultural and political contexts of women’s and girls’ realities;

To promote and implement legislation, regulation, policies and programmes that facilitate substantive gender equality, the social, political and economic empowerment of all women and girls, and prevent and eliminate all forms of discrimination and sexual and gender-based violence and harassment, in all spheres of life, both online and offline;

To respect, protect and fulfil all women’s and girls’ equal enjoyment of all human rights, in particular by preventing and eliminating all forms of discrimination by all actors, State and non-State, including by combating gender-based and other bias, and acknowledging that structural and multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination perpetuate deeply damaging stereotypes, while also undertaking special measures, in accordance with international obligations, to accelerate progress towards achieving substantive equality and ensuring that women and girls can enjoy their rights in practice;

To remove all discriminatory barriers, including those of a political, legal, social, practical, structural, cultural, economic, institutional and physical nature, and those derived from misuse of religion, that prevent the full, equal, effective and meaningful participation, in all fields, of women throughout their life course, as well as of girls, in accordance with their age and maturity, including the participation of women in leadership at all levels of decision-making in the public and private sectors, and to actively promote diversity in leadership and a culture of inclusive and enabling leadership;

To support substantive gender equality, including within families, in particular in the promotion of measures to reduce, redistribute and value unpaid care, support and domestic work, which is mainly performed by women and girls, including older women and women with disabilities, especially those in marginalized and vulnerable situations, by promoting the equal sharing of responsibilities within the household and by prioritizing, inter alia, sustainable infrastructure, social protection policies and accessible, affordable and quality social services, including care services, childcare and paid maternity, paternity or parental leave;

To respect, protect and fulfil the right to education for all women and girls, throughout their life course and at all levels, especially for those who have been left furthest behind, in particular girls living in poverty, and to promote long-term awareness-raising initiatives in education, in communities in the media and in the digital context, engaging men and boys, through the incorporation of curricula on all women’s and girls’ rights into teacher training courses, on topics including the root causes of gender-based discrimination and the prevention of sexual and gender-based violence, including domestic violence, and the promotion of shared responsibility for unpaid care, support and domestic work within the household and the family, and by ensuring universal access to evidence-based comprehensive sexuality education;

To develop, support and protect an enabling environment for the full, effective, meaningful and equal participation of civil society, including women’s and girls’ rights organizations, feminist groups, women and girl human rights defenders and girl- and youth-led organizations, in the creation, design, implementation and monitoring of all legislation and policies relevant to achieving substantive gender equality;

To review, modify or repeal any law or policy that restricts women with disabilities, including older women with disabilities, and prevents their effective, meaningful and full participation in political and public life, in decision-making and in the design, management, resourcing and implementation of policies and programmes, and to take steps to ensure that care and support systems are resourced appropriately and implemented in a way that supports community inclusion;

To respect, protect and fulfil the right to sexual and reproductive health, including for adolescent girls and young women, free from discrimination, coercion and violence, including by addressing social and other determinants of health, the removal of legal barriers and the development and enforcement of policies, good practices and legal frameworks that respect dignity, integrity and the right to bodily autonomy and guarantee universal access to sexual and reproductive health services and evidence-based information and education, including for family planning, and to ensure timely access to maternal health services and emergency obstetric care, including treatment for pregnancy-related morbidities, that are respectful of individual privacy;

To adopt specific measures to close the digital divides, including the gender digital divide, in particular for girls and young women living in poverty, and to ensure that particular attention is paid to access, affordability, digital literacy, privacy, safety online and offline, enhancing the use of technology, addressing the underrepresentation of women in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math and promoting equal opportunities in the design and implementation of technology and in mainstreaming gender, age and disability perspectives into policy decisions and the frameworks that guide them;

Calls upon States to implement policies and actions:

To collect, share, promote, support, implement and widely publicize evidence and good practices, including awareness-raising programmes to prevent and eliminate all forms of discrimination against women and girls and to counter gender and other stereotyping, harmful portrayals of women and girls, including those who face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, to prevent and eliminate sexual and gender-based violence and to promote and support the implementation of awareness-raising programmes to combat gender and other stereotypes and gender-based discrimination in all settings;

To ensure access to justice and accountability mechanisms and timely and effective remedies for the effective implementation and enforcement of laws aimed at preventing and eliminating all forms of discrimination and gender-based violence, including by adopting a survivor-centred approach, by informing women and girls about their rights under relevant laws in an accessible way, by improving legal infrastructure and by mainstreaming age-, disability- and gender-responsive training into justice systems to ensure equality before the law and equal protection of women and girls by the law;

To modify social and cultural patterns of conduct that create, promote or perpetuate racist, xenophobic, patriarchal, disability, age and gender stereotypes and any other harmful social norms, attitudes or behaviours or unequal power relations that view women and girls as subordinates or that underlie and perpetuate multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls;

Recognizes that the reduction of socioeconomic inequalities is an essential element of effective action to overcome poverty among women and girls, and reaffirms the importance of achieving gender equality and respecting and promoting the full enjoyment of human rights by women and girls in efforts towards poverty eradication, development policies and laws and efforts to overcoming inequalities both within and among nations;

Reaffirms that guaranteeing the right to social security, in a gender-responsive manner, is crucial to combating poverty by enabling women and girls, throughout their life course, to enjoy the human right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food, clothing and housing, the rights to safe drinking water and sanitation and the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, among others, and that the right to an adequate standard of living includes access to and maintaining benefits, whether in cash or in-kind, without discrimination, in order to secure protection from a lack of work-related income, unaffordable health care and insufficient family support;

Calls upon States to take immediate gender-responsive measures to eradicate women’s and girls’ poverty, address gender and socioeconomic inequalities and achieve substantive equality, inter alia, by:

Identifying and addressing, with the full, equal and meaningful participation of women and girls, the root causes and specific challenges faced by women and girls who experience poverty and compounded inequalities;

Seeking to guarantee access to universal, accessible, adequate, available and comprehensive social protection, throughout the life course of women and girls, regardless of their marital status, employment or participation in the formal labour market;

Eliminating all forms of discrimination, in law or in practice, against women and girls, in relation to access to land rights, seeds, resources, housing and property, including upon entry into marriage and during marriage and its dissolution;

Developing and implementing comprehensive, robust, resilient and gender-, disability- and age-responsive care and support systems, with full respect for human rights, that are based on the principles of equality, non-discrimination and universality and that promote shared responsibilities and autonomy;

Ensuring the availability, affordability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of health information, services and products, including those required to address “menstrual poverty”;

Adopting all measures necessary to prevent, respond to and eliminate sexual and gender-based violence, including domestic violence, against women and girls experiencing poverty through adequately funded public services and welfare systems, including shelters and access to legal counsel and legal redress mechanisms;

Repealing, modifying or reviewing laws that criminalize acts associated with poverty and life-sustaining activities and that criminalize or restrict the exercise of sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights;

Developing and implementing appropriate gender-responsive systems to measure intrahousehold and multidimensional poverty and equality, as well as establishing appropriate participatory monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to oversee the implementation of relevant poverty-reduction programmes and policies, assess their impacts on women and girls and adopt corrective measures, including with regard to sufficient fund allocation and gender-responsive budgeting;

Promoting the participation and consultation of women and girls in the design, preparation and implementation of economic and social laws and policies at the local and national levels, and promoting gender equality in decision-making bodies;

Promoting transparent, proportional, progressive and gender-responsive taxation frameworks;

Taking regulatory measures to combat gender-based discrimination in the provision of services, including health-care services, by private sector actors, with the aim of ensuring that the services they provide are accessible, adequate and regularly assessed in order to meet the needs and respect the human rights of women and girls, both in urban and rural areas;

Prioritizing the eradication of poverty and the respect, protection and fulfilment of human rights in the development and implementation of international assistance and cooperation programmes and agreements, paying particular attention to addressing the situation of women and girls living in poverty;

Conducting or encouraging further women-led research about the impact of structural adjustments, taxation, debt, macroeconomic policies and trade and investment agreements on human rights and gender equality, and improving the situation of women and girls living in poverty;

Calls upon all States to continue to develop and enhance standards and methodologies using a human rights-based approach in the design and roll-out of population censuses and household surveys, as well as in the collection, analysis and dissemination of gender statistics and sex-, age- and disability-disaggregated data by strengthening national statistical capacity, including by enhancing the mobilization, from all sources, of financial and technical assistance to enable 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;

Encourages business entities to contribute to tax justice by complying with their fiscal obligations, as well as to the realization of the human rights of all women and girls, by, inter alia, implementing participatory gender and human rights impact assessments and due diligence processes, consistent with the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and ensuring that grievance mechanisms and remedies for business-related abuses are accessible, effective and gender-responsive;

Encourages international and regional economic, financial and monetary institutions and their member States to consider:

Adopting human rights-based approaches that prioritize sustainable development and the elimination of poverty and of gendered socioeconomic and sociopolitical inequalities;

Designing, developing and implementing gender-responsive budgets to realize women’s and girls’ human rights and gender equality, using gender-budgeting tools, adopting measures such as gender-responsive subsidies, aid, development cooperation and loans and financing and creating mechanisms for budget accountability;

Promoting the meaningful participation and consultation of women and girls in the design, preparation, implementation and evaluation of economic policies at the international level, and promoting gender equality in their decision-making bodies;

Requests the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls to continue to consider, and to mainstream across all its work, age and disability perspectives, in the fulfilment of its mandate, and to examine the specific forms of discrimination that girls face, and welcomes its decision to analyse, in its future work, discrimination against women and girls in the digital sphere, including as it relates to new and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, and the impact of current and future developments on their rights, well-being and potential;

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 countries 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 (UN-Women), the treaty bodies, the special procedures of the Human Rights Council, within their respective mandates, and civil society actors, including women’s and girls’ rights organizations, as well as Indigenous Peoples and 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 to it;

Reiterates its request to the Secretary-General to ensure that the reports of the Working Group are brought to the attention of the Commission on the Status of Women and the General Assembly, through a transmittal note, takes note that, for the first time, the Chair of the Working Group addressed the Commission at its sixty-eighth session, during the opening segment, and requests the Working Group to continue to present an oral report annually to the Commission and to the General Assembly, in proximity with the reports of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, and of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women;

Encourages States to proactively seek, nominate and elect more women candidates to fill vacancies in United Nations human rights organs and mechanisms, including in leadership positions, in order to ensure the equal representation of women;

Calls upon States to consider ways to enhance the participation of women in the work of the Human Rights Council, taking into consideration existing guidelines and standards, as set out in Council resolution 6/30 of 14 December 2007, Council decision 6/102 of 27 September 2007 and President’s statement OS/12/1;

Requests the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to prepare a report on the implementation of the recommendations contained in the report of the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee, to be published in an Easy Read version and an accessible format, in close cooperation with the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and the Advisory Committee and in consultation with key stakeholders, and to present it to the Council at its sixty-second session;

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

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Who created this mandate?

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What does this mandate say?

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