Intensification of Efforts to Eliminate All Forms of Violence Against Women

A/RES/63/155No PDF available

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 56aAdvancement of women, published in 2009.

What other versions does this mandate have?

6 versions · 2007–2013

This is an older version — the most recent is A/RES/67/144

2013A/RES/67/144Intensification of efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against womenLatestCompare with previous version
2011A/RES/65/187Intensification of efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against womenCompare with previous version
2010A/RES/64/137Intensification of efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against womenCompare with previous version
2009A/RES/63/155Intensification of efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against womenCompare with previous version
2008A/RES/62/133Intensification of efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against womenCompare with previous version

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

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

2 reports of the Secretary-General submitted under this mandate, 2009–2010.

2010A/65/208Intensification of efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women report of the Secretary-General
2009A/64/151Intensification of efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women report of the Secretary-General

Identified automatically from the metadata in each report’s UN Digital Library catalogue record.

What does this mandate say?

46 operative paragraphs

Stresses that “violence against women” means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life;

Recognizes that violence against women and girls persists in every country in the world as a pervasive violation of the enjoyment of human rights and a major impediment to achieving gender equality, development, peace and the internationally agreed development goals, in particular the Millennium Development Goals;

Expresses its concern about the continuing level of impunity for acts of violence against women worldwide;

Welcomes the report of the Secretary-General on the intensification of efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women, and takes note of the report of the Secretary-General on eliminating rape and other forms of sexual violence in all their manifestations, including in conflict and related situations;

Welcomes also the efforts and important contributions at the local, national, regional and international levels to eliminate all forms of violence against women, including by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, in particular the second thematic report on violence against women, its causes and consequences submitted by the Special Rapporteur to the Human Rights Council in 2008;

Recognizes the important role of the family in preventing and combating violence against women and girls and the need to support its capacity to prevent and combat violence against women;

Welcomes the launch of the Secretary-General’s campaign to end violence against women “UNiTE to End Violence against Women”, supported, inter alia, by the United Nations Development Fund for Women advocacy campaign “Say NO to violence against women” and the United Nations inter-agency initiative “Stop Rape Now: United Nations Action against Sexual Violence in Conflict”, stresses the need to ensure that concrete follow-up activities will be undertaken by the United Nations system to intensify action to end violence against women, in close consultation with existing system-wide activities on violence against women, and requests the Secretary-General to identify, announce and report on the basis of the expected results of his campaign;

Strongly condemns all acts of violence against women and girls, whether these acts are perpetrated by the State, by private persons or by non-State actors, and calls for the elimination of all forms of gender-based violence in the family, within the general community and where perpetrated or condoned by the State;

Stresses that it is important that States strongly condemn all forms of violence against women and refrain from invoking any custom, tradition or religious consideration to avoid their obligations with respect to its elimination as set out in the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women;2

Stresses also that States have the obligation to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms of women and girls and must exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate, prosecute and punish the perpetrators of violence against women and girls and to provide protection to the victims, and that failure to do so violates and impairs or nullifies the enjoyment of their human rights and fundamental freedoms;

Urges States to end impunity for violence against women by investigating, prosecuting with due process and punishing all perpetrators, by ensuring that women have equal protection of the law and equal access to justice and by holding up to public scrutiny and eliminating those attitudes that foster, justify or tolerate all forms of violence against women and girls;

Reaffirms that the persistence of armed conflicts in various parts of the world is a major impediment to the elimination of all forms of violence against women, and, bearing in mind that armed and other types of conflicts and terrorism and hostage-taking still persist in many parts of the world and that aggression, foreign occupation and ethnic and other types of conflicts are an ongoing reality affecting women and men in nearly every region, calls upon all States and the international community to place particular focus on and give priority attention and increased assistance to the plight and suffering of women and girls living in such situations and to ensure that, where violence is committed against them, all perpetrators of such violence are duly investigated and, as appropriate, prosecuted and punished in order to end impunity, while stressing the need to respect international humanitarian law and human rights law;

Stresses the need for the exclusion of the killing and maiming of women and girls, as prohibited under international law, and sexual violence crimes from amnesty provisions in the context of conflict resolution processes;

Stresses also that States should take measures to ensure that all officials responsible for implementing policies and programmes aimed at preventing violence against women, protecting and assisting the victims, and investigating and punishing violence against women, receive proper training to sensitize them to the different and specific needs of women, in particular women who have been subjected to violence, so that women are not revictimized when seeking justice and redress;

Stresses further that States should take all possible measures to empower women and inform them of their rights in seeking redress through mechanisms of justice, inform everyone of women’s rights and of the existing penalties for violating those rights, and engage men and boys, as well as families, as agents of change in preventing and condemning violence against women;

Urges States to continue to develop their national strategy and a more systematic, comprehensive, multisectoral and sustained approach aimed at eliminating all forms of violence against women, including by achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women, and by using best practices to end impunity and a culture of tolerance towards violence against women, inter alia, in the fields of legislation, prevention, law enforcement, victim assistance and rehabilitation, such as:

Establishing, in partnership with all relevant stakeholders, a comprehensive integrated national plan dedicated to combating violence against women in all its aspects, which includes data collection and analysis, prevention and protection measures, as well as national information campaigns using resources to eliminate in the media gender stereotypes that lead to violence against women and girls;

Reviewing and, where appropriate, revising, amending or abolishing all laws, regulations, policies, practices and customs that discriminate against women or have a discriminatory impact on women, and ensuring that the provisions of multiple legal systems, where they exist, comply with international human rights obligations, commitments and principles, including the principle of non-discrimination;

Evaluating and assessing the impact of current legislation, rules and procedures regarding violence against women, including the reasons for low reporting, and, where necessary, reinforcing criminal law and procedure relating to all forms of violence against women and, where necessary, incorporating into law measures aimed at preventing violence against women;

Ensuring that there is sufficient knowledge, including expertise in effective legal approaches to eliminating violence against women, awareness and coordination in the legal system and, to that end, where appropriate, appointing a focal point in the legal system for cases of violence against women;

Ensuring the systematic collection and analysis of data to monitor all forms of violence against women, while ensuring and maintaining the privacy and confidentiality of the victims, including with the involvement of national statistical offices and, where appropriate, in partnership with other actors;

Establishing appropriate national mechanisms for monitoring and evaluating the implementation of national measures, including national action plans, taken to eliminate violence against women and girls, including through the use of national indicators;

Providing adequate financial support for the implementation of national action plans to end violence against women and other relevant activities;

Allocating adequate resources to promote the empowerment of women and gender equality and to prevent and redress all forms and manifestations of violence against women;

Adopting all appropriate measures, especially in the field of education, to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women and to eliminate prejudices, customary practices and all other practices based on the idea of the inferiority or superiority of either of the sexes and on stereotyped roles for men and women;

Empowering women, in particular women living in poverty, through, inter alia, social and economic policies that guarantee them full and equal access to all levels of quality education and training and to affordable and adequate public and social services, as well as equal access to financial resources and full and equal rights to own land and other property, and taking further appropriate measures to address the increasing rate of homelessness or inadequate housing for women in order to reduce their vulnerability to violence;

Treating all forms of violence against women and girls as a criminal offence, punishable by law, and ensuring penalties commensurate with the severity of the crimes and sanctions in domestic legislation to punish and redress, as appropriate, the wrongs caused to women who are subjected to violence;

Taking effective measures to prevent the victim’s consent from becoming an impediment to bringing perpetrators of violence against women to justice, while ensuring that appropriate safeguards to protect the victim are in place;

Ensuring that effective legal assistance is available to all female victims of violence so that they can make informed decisions regarding, inter alia, legal proceedings and issues relating to family law, and also ensuring that victims have access to just and effective remedies for the harm that they have suffered, including through the adoption of national legislation where necessary;

Ensuring that all relevant public officials coordinate effectively in the prevention, investigation, prosecution and punishment of all forms of violence against women, and provide protection and support to victims;

Developing or improving and disseminating specialized training programmes, including practical tools and good practices guidelines on how to identify, prevent and deal with cases of violence against women and on how to assist victims, for police officers, the judiciary, health workers, law enforcement personnel and other relevant public authorities;

Strengthening national health and social infrastructure to reinforce measures to promote women’s equal access to public health and address the health consequences of all forms of violence against women, including by providing support to victims;

Establishing or supporting integrated centres through which shelter, legal, health, psychological, counselling and other services are provided to victims of all forms of violence against women and, where such centres are not yet feasible, promoting collaboration and coordination among agencies, in order to make remedies more accessible and to facilitate the physical, psychological and social recovery of victims, and ensuring that victims have access to such services;

Ensuring adequate and comprehensive rehabilitation and reintegration of victims of violence into society;

Ensuring that the prison system and probation services provide appropriate rehabilitation programmes for perpetrators, as a preventive tool to avoid recidivism;

Supporting and engaging in partnerships with non-governmental organizations, in particular women’s organizations, and other relevant actors and the private sector to end violence against women;

Calls upon the international community, including the United Nations system and, as appropriate, regional and subregional organizations, to support national efforts to promote the empowerment of women and gender equality in order to enhance national efforts to eliminate violence against women and girls, including, upon request, in the development and implementation of national action plans on the elimination of violence against women and girls, through, inter alia, and taking into account national priorities, official development assistance and other appropriate assistance, such as facilitating the sharing of guidelines, methodologies and best practices;

Stresses the contribution of the ad hoc international criminal tribunals in ending impunity through ensuring accountability and punishing perpetrators of violence against women, as well as the contribution the International Criminal Court can make, and urges States to consider ratifying or acceding as a matter of priority to the Rome Statute,Error: Reference source not found which entered into force on 1 July 2002;

Welcomes the steps taken by several United Nations bodies to discuss, within their respective mandates, the question of violence against women in all its forms and manifestations, and encourages all relevant bodies to continue to address this issue in their future efforts and work programmes;

Reiterates its request to the Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality to consider ways and means to enhance the effectiveness of the United Nations Trust Fund in Support of Actions to Eliminate Violence against Women as a system-wide funding mechanism for preventing and redressing all forms of violence against women and girls, and in this regard stresses the importance of new and increased contributions from all States to the Fund in order to achieve the target set by the United Nations Development Fund for Women;

Calls upon all United Nations bodies, entities, funds and programmes and the specialized agencies and invites the Bretton Woods institutions to intensify their efforts at all levels to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls and to better coordinate their work, inter alia, through the Task Force on Violence against Women of the Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality;

Requests the Secretary-General to submit:

To the General Assembly at its sixty-fourth session a report with information provided by the United Nations bodies, funds and programmes and the specialized agencies on their follow-up activities to implement Assembly resolutions 61/143 and 62/133 and the present resolution, including on their assistance to States in their efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women;

To the General Assembly at its sixty-fifth session a report with information provided by States on their follow-up activities to implement the present resolution;

Also requests the Secretary-General to present an oral report to the Commission on the Status of Women at its fifty-third session with information provided by the United Nations bodies, funds and programmes and the specialized agencies on recent follow-up activities to implement resolutions 61/143 and 62/133, including on the progress made in enhancing the effectiveness of the United Nations Trust Fund in Support of Actions to Eliminate Violence against Women as a system-wide United Nations mechanism and on the progress of the Secretary-General’s campaign to end violence against women, and urges United Nations bodies, entities, funds and programmes and the specialized agencies to contribute promptly to that report;

Decides to continue the consideration of the question at its sixty-fourth session under the item entitled “Advancement of women”.

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Intensification of Efforts to Eliminate All Forms of Violence Against Women

Who created this mandate?

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What does this mandate say?

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