Promoting, Protecting and Respecting Women's and Girls' Full Enjoyment of Human Rights in Humanitarian Situations

Calls upon all States to respect international law, including international humanitarian law and human rights law, and in particular to fulfil their obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of all women and girls, including in humanitarian situations, and to ensure that these obligations are reflected in national laws, policies, strategies and plans related to conflict prevention and response, humanitarian response and climate change and disaster risk management, including women and peace and security national action plans, where appropriate and as applicable, that are age- and gender-responsive and disability-inclusive, multi-hazard and human rights-centred and that respond to the lived realities of affected women and girls, promoting their safe, meaningful participation;

Calls upon all relevant actors to invest in the conduct of comprehensive risk assessments prior to the onset of humanitarian emergencies to identify potential risks, persons in vulnerable situations and existing national capacities, and encourages the systematic, impartial and timely collection, analysis and dissemination of sex-, age- and disability-disaggregated data and gender analysis on the human rights situation and humanitarian needs of women and girls in humanitarian situations to address the persistent evidence gaps that undermine effective, human rights-based humanitarian programming and to ensure that data-collection systems are interoperable and designed and implemented in a manner that guarantees confidentiality, safety, data protection and the informed consent of those providing information, while avoiding increased risks of stigmatization, reprisals, revictimization or exposure of victims and survivors and their families;

Calls upon States, United Nations agencies and humanitarian actors, as appropriate, to recognize and address the differentiated human rights impacts of climate change and environmental pollution and degradation on women and girls and to adopt human rights-based, age- and gender-responsive and disability-inclusive approaches from the outset of prevention, recovery and resilience strategies, where relevant, guaranteeing that such approaches are developed with respect for the views and the meaningful participation of affected women and girls and their communities and build on women’s roles as first responders and local knowledge holders;

Also calls upon States, United Nations agencies and humanitarian actors, in collaboration, where appropriate, with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, to ensure uninterrupted and non-discriminatory access for women and girls in all humanitarian situations to healthcare services, including sexual and reproductive healthcare services and maternal health services, the timely distribution of dignity kits tailored to context-specific needs and the continuity of inclusive and equitable quality education and nutrition and to ensure that the physical design and delivery of humanitarian assistance across all displacement settings, including camps, informal settlements and host community contexts, incorporates adequate lighting, safe, adequate and equitable sanitation facilities and secure access routes, as minimum safety measures to prevent and mitigate gender-based violence;

Calls upon all States, United Nations agencies, within their respective mandates, and humanitarian actors, where appropriate, to integrate gender-based violence risk mitigation across all sectoral programming, including in relation to water, sanitation and hygiene, shelter, land and site coordination, health, food security, education and livelihoods, by developing disaster contingency plans that ensure continuity of gender-based violence risk reduction measures, establishing dedicated gender-based violence coordination mechanisms prior to the onset of emergencies and setting minimum preparedness standards to ensure that gender-based violence response capacity is in place before a crisis occurs;

Calls upon all States, United Nations agencies and humanitarian actors to adopt, enforce and resource zero-tolerance policies on sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment for all those who work or are involved in humanitarian settings, including through mandatory prior training on protection from sexual exploitation and abuse and on the specific protection needs of women and girls, the establishment of accessible, safe and confidential complaint mechanisms for reporting sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment and the provision of timely, victim- and survivor-centred assistance, and accountability measures for perpetrators;

Calls upon States, United Nations agencies and humanitarian actors, as appropriate, to provide comprehensive, adequate, sustainable and accessible support services for women and girls who are victims of human rights violations and abuses in humanitarian situations, including health services, including sexual and reproductive healthcare, mental health and sustained psychosocial support services, legal assistance and economic empowerment, through well-funded shelters, specialized organizations and coordinated multi-service referral pathways, ensuring that all services and programmes are trauma-informed, victim- and survivor-centred, age-, gender- and disability-sensitive and respectful of privacy and dignity, invites States and other relevant stakeholders to consider implementing accessible and timely remedies and recovery programmes, where applicable, recognizes the significant resource demands that such programmes place on States, particularly developing countries responding to humanitarian situations, and stresses the importance of sustained international support for host countries at their request;

Calls upon all States, in accordance with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law, to adopt a holistic approach to accountability for all forms of violence against all women and girls, including sexual and gender-based violence, in humanitarian situations that moves beyond punitive criminal justice frameworks to encompass preventive measures, access to justice and effective remedies, including through accessible complaint mechanisms, the removal of structural and financial barriers to legal aid and guarantees of non-revictimization;

Calls upon all United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, States and relevant humanitarian actors to take into consideration the promotion and protection of the rights of women and girls in humanitarian situations throughout the ongoing efforts within the United Nations and humanitarian system, including in relation to the programmatic capacity of gender-based violence prevention, mitigation and response;

Calls upon States, relevant United Nations agencies, within their respective mandates, and international cooperation actors to adopt integrated and coherent programming approaches that foster women’s economic empowerment and equal access to property, land, economic resources and formal employment and promote social protection policies, care and support systems and labour market inclusion in post-conflict and post-crisis situations and to treat recovery and reconstruction as a critical opportunity to advance gender equality and to dismantle structural barriers to gender equality rather than to reproduce them;

Encourages States, United Nations agencies, international financial institutions and other donors, as appropriate, to consider increasing the direct, flexible and multi-year funding allocated to gender-based violence mitigation, prevention and response and to gender-responsive programming, including, where appropriate, by directing a meaningful share to women- and girl-led and women’s and girls’ rights organizations and operationalizing the localization agenda, to enable national and local organizations to lead humanitarian response efforts and to invest in sustained national and community-based capacity to prevent and respond to gender-based violence, ensuring that emergency programming strengthens rather than substitutes for national protection and care and support systems beyond the acute phase of response, and encourages States to address the current global humanitarian funding gap by supporting the promotion, protection and respect of the full enjoyment of human rights by all women and girls in humanitarian situations;

Requests the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to submit to the Human Rights Council, at its seventy-first session, an analytical report on the impact of the funding gaps and of the humanitarian-development divide on the enjoyment of human rights by all women and girls in humanitarian situations and recommendations for bridging the gap and fulfilling the rights of women and girls in a manner consistent with international human rights law, with input from all relevant stakeholders, including States Members of the United Nations, United Nations bodies, agencies, funds and programmes, the treaty bodies, the special procedures of the Council, national human rights institutions, civil society organizations and women and girls in humanitarian situations.