Intensification of Efforts to Prevent and Eliminate All Forms of Violence Against Women and Girls : Gender Stereotypes and Negative Social Norms

A/RES/77/193View PDF

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 26Advancement of women, published in 2022.

Who cites this mandate in the budget?

2 entities

Extracted automatically from each entity’s budget submission.

What subjects does this mandate have?

6 topics

Crime Prevention Crime Victims Gender Equality Gender-Based Violence Women's Advancement Women's Rights

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

1 report of the Secretary-General submitted under this mandate, 2024.

2024A/79/500Intensification of efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls : technology-facilitated violence against women and girls report of the Secretary-General

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

What does this mandate say?

52 operative paragraphs

Strongly condemns all forms of violence against all women and girls, which often occur in a continuum and throughout the life course, and their persistence and pervasiveness, recognizing that they are an impediment to the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls and to the full realization of their human rights;

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

Urges States to strongly condemn all forms of violence against women and girls, both offline and online, and reaffirms that they should not invoke any custom, tradition or religious consideration to avoid their obligations with respect to its elimination and should pursue, by all appropriate means and without delay, a policy of eliminating all forms of violence against women, as set out in the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women;

Calls upon States to address multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, which place women and girls at greater risk of exploitation, violence and abuse, to implement measures to prevent and eliminate gender stereotypes, negative social norms, attitudes and behaviours that cause or perpetuate discrimination and violence against women and girls and to ensure their participation and leadership in society;

Urges States to take comprehensive, multisectoral, coordinated, effective and gender-responsive measures to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls and to address structural and underlying causes and risk factors, including by:

Designing and implementing legislation and policies to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence and harmful practices against all women and girls, including sexual and gender-based violence, domestic violence, including intimate partner violence and marital rape, online violence, sexual harassment, gender-related killing of women and girls, including femicide and female infanticide, child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation, and to end impunity for such cases;

Addressing and eliminating the root causes of gender inequality, including all forms of discrimination against women and girls, patriarchal values, unequal power relations, gender stereotypes and negative social norms, perceptions and customs and harmful social norms, attitudes and behaviours, which justify, normalize, condone or perpetuate violence against women and girls and stigmatize victims and survivors;

Preventing and eliminating, in all public and private spheres, discrimination, gender stereotypes, negative social norms, attitudes and behaviours and unequal power relations by which women and girls are regarded as subordinate to men and boys, and that underlie and perpetuate male domination, by designing and implementing gender-responsive policies, regulations and legislation that are aimed at eliminating discriminatory attitudes and social and cultural patterns of conduct that condone violence against all women and girls;

Addressing and eliminating gender stereotypes and negative social norms that perpetuate racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, which reveal themselves in a differentiated manner for women and girls and can be among the factors leading to a deterioration in their living conditions, poverty, violence, multiple forms of discrimination and limitation or denial of their human rights;

Eliminating gender stereotypes and negative social norms that can lead to violence against migrant women and girls, including women migrant workers, by addressing the structural and underlying causes of all forms of violence against them, including through education and the dissemination of information to combat misinformation and stigma against them, by acknowledging their positive contributions, thereby combating negative perceptions of them, and by raising awareness of gender equality issues and promoting their economic empowerment and access to decent work;

Taking measures to empower women by, inter alia, strengthening their economic autonomy and ensuring their full, effective, equal and meaningful participation in society and in decision-making processes by adopting and implementing social and economic policies that guarantee women full and equal access to opportunities, resources and basic services such as quality education and training and affordable and adequate public and social services, as well as full and equal access to financial, natural and productive resources and decent work, equal pay for work of equal value, and full and equal rights to own and have access to and control over land and other property, and guaranteeing women’s and girls’ inheritance rights, and taking further appropriate measures to address the increasing rate of homelessness of and inadequate housing for women in order to reduce their vulnerability to violence;

Enacting or strengthening and enforcing laws and policies to eliminate all forms of violence and harassment against women of all ages in the world of work, including by eliminating gender stereotypes and negative social norms;

Adopting measures to recognize, reduce and redistribute women’s and girls’ disproportionate share of unpaid care, informal and domestic work and to tackle the persisting feminization of poverty, including through poverty eradication measures, labour policies, public services and social protection programmes, and to address the discrimination and gender inequality, including gender stereotypes and negative social norms, attitudes and behaviours and unequal power relations in which women and girls are viewed as subordinate to men and boys, that are at the root of these imbalances;

Ensuring the promotion and protection of the human rights of all women and their sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences, including through the development and enforcement of policies and legal frameworks and the strengthening of health systems that make universally accessible and available quality, comprehensive sexual and reproductive health-care services, commodities, information and education, including safe and effective methods of modern contraception, emergency contraception, prevention programmes for adolescent pregnancy, maternal health care such as skilled birth attendance and emergency obstetric care, which will reduce obstetric fistula and other complications of pregnancy and delivery, safe abortion where such services are permitted by national law, and prevention and treatment of reproductive tract infections, sexually transmitted infections, HIV and reproductive cancers, recognizing that human rights include the right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free from coercion, discrimination and violence;

Developing and implementing programmes that aim to prevent and eliminate gender disparities in enrolment and gender stereotypes and negative social norms in education systems, curricula and materials, whether derived from any discriminatory practices, social or cultural attitudes or legal and economic circumstances;

Implementing, in partnership with all relevant stakeholders, effective violence prevention and response activities in schools and communities, educating children from a young age regarding the importance of treating all people with dignity and respect, and designing educational programmes and teaching materials that support consent, non-violent behaviour, respect for boundaries and what constitutes unacceptable behaviour and how to report it, that eliminate gender stereotypes and negative social norms, build self-esteem and informed decision-making and communication skills and promote the development of respectful relationships based on gender equality, inclusion and respect for human rights;

Developing policies and programmes with the support, where appropriate, of international organizations, civil society and non-governmental organizations, giving priority to formal, informal and non-formal education programmes, including scientifically accurate and age-appropriate comprehensive education that is relevant to cultural contexts, that targets stereotyped gender roles and promotes the values of gender equality and non-discrimination, including positive masculinities, and that provides adolescent girls and boys and young women and men in and out of school, consistent with their evolving capacities, and with appropriate direction and guidance from parents and legal guardians, with the best interests of the child as their basic concern, information on sexual and reproductive health and HIV prevention, gender equality and women’s empowerment, human rights, physical, psychological and pubertal development, including menstrual health, and power in relationships between women and men, to enable them to build self-esteem and foster informed decision-making, communication and risk reduction skills and to develop respectful relationships, in full partnership with young persons, parents, legal guardians, caregivers, educators and health-care providers, in order to, inter alia, enable them to protect themselves from HIV infection and other risks;

Removing barriers, including political, legal, cultural, social, economic, institutional and religious ones, preventing women’s full, equal, effective and meaningful participation in leadership and political and other decision-making positions, taking into account that promoting women to leadership positions may significantly reduce the risk of violence against women and girls and promoting the full, effective, equal and meaningful participation of women and women’s organizations, including victims and survivors of violence, in the development, implementation and evaluation of gender-responsive policies, regulations and legislation designed to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls and to allow civil society to operate freely and safely without fear of intimidation or reprisals;

Preventing, addressing and prohibiting gender-based violence, including sexual harassment, against all women and girls in public and political life, including women in leadership positions, journalists and other media workers, feminists and women human rights defenders, including through practical steps to prevent threats, harassment and violence, and to combat impunity by ensuring that those responsible for violations and abuses, including sexual and gender-based violence and threats, including in digital contexts, are promptly brought to justice and held accountable through impartial investigations;

Promoting the full, equal and meaningful participation and leadership of young women and, as appropriate, adolescent girls in decision-making processes by addressing gender-specific barriers and by promoting and enabling spaces where they can express their views of all matters relevant to them, ensuring their full and equal access to quality education, technology and skills development, leadership and mentorship programmes, increased technical and financial support, and protection from all forms of violence and discrimination;

Preventing, addressing and prohibiting all forms of discrimination, intimidation, harassment and violence, both offline and online, that prevent women and girls from fully enjoying all their human rights and fundamental freedoms, and taking all measures to address the gender digital divide and ensure equal access of women and girls to information and communications technology design and consumption, promoting digital, media and information literacy and connectivity to enable the participation of all women and girls in education and training, while noting with concern that new technological developments can perpetuate existing patterns of inequality and discrimination, including in the algorithms used in artificial intelligence-based solutions;

Adopting and implementing effective measures to encourage the media to eliminate discrimination against women and girls, including the harmful and stereotypical portrayal of women or specific groups of women, from their activities, practices and output, including those perpetuated by advertisements, online and in other digital environments, that foster gender-based violence, sexual exploitation and inequality, and to refrain from presenting women and girls as inferior beings and exploiting them as sexual objects and commodities;

Mainstreaming a gender perspective in the conceptualization, development and implementation of digital technologies and related policies and promoting the participation of women in order to address violence and discrimination against women and girls in digital contexts, inter alia by encouraging digital technology companies, including Internet service providers, to respect standards and implement transparent and accessible reporting mechanisms;

Taking appropriate measures for the prevention of all forms of violence, intimidation, threats and attacks against women online and through digital technologies, and to protect them in online spaces, and considering adopting laws, policies and practices that protect them from defamation and hate speech while also respecting their human rights and fundamental freedoms;

Ensuring that, in armed conflict and post-conflict situations and in natural disaster situations, the prevention of and response to all forms of violence against women and girls, including sexual and gender-based violence and conflict-related sexual violence, are prioritized and effectively addressed and are centred on victims and survivors, while respecting the rights and prioritizing the needs of survivors, including groups that are particularly at risk or may be specifically targeted, including through the investigation, prosecution and punishment of perpetrators and the strengthening of national justice mechanisms to end impunity, the removal of barriers to women’s and girls’ access to justice, the establishment of complaint and reporting mechanisms and the provision of support and services to victims and survivors;

Addressing gender stereotypes and negative social norms in order to create an enabling environment for women’s and girls’ empowerment in the context of climate change, environmental degradation and disasters, including in situations of response to extreme weather events;

Engaging, educating, encouraging and supporting men and boys to be positive role models for gender equality and to promote respectful relationships, to refrain from and condemn all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls, to increase their understanding of the harmful effects of violence for the victim/survivor and society as a whole, and to ensure that they take responsibility and are held accountable for behaviour, including for behaviour that perpetuates gender stereotypes and negative social norms, including misconceptions about masculinities that underlie discrimination and violence against women and girls, and that men and boys take responsibility for their sexual and reproductive behaviour and for equitable sharing of responsibilities with respect to care and household work;

Designing, implementing and regularly monitoring the impact of national policies, programmes and strategies that address the roles and responsibilities of men and boys, including through combating social-cultural norms and traditional and customary practices that condone violence against all women and girls, counteracting attitudes by which women and girls are regarded as subordinate to men and boys or as having stereotyped gender roles that perpetuate practices involving violence or coercion, and aiming to ensure the equal sharing of responsibilities within households in unpaid care and domestic work, including through parental leave policies, and increased flexibility in working arrangements which would facilitate the equal sharing of responsibilities;

Recognizing the importance of working with men and boys to combat gender stereotypes and negative social norms and unequal power relations, ensuring that all policies and programmes on preventing and ending violence against women and girls aimed at engaging men and boys are designed and promoted with the ultimate objectives of ensuring that the concerns of all women and girls, their rights, their empowerment, their safety and their voices and women’s full, equal and meaningful participation in decision-making and political agendas at all levels are prioritized;

Holding persons in positions of authority, whether in public or private environments, such as teachers, religious and community leaders, traditional authorities, politicians and law enforcement officials, accountable for not complying with and/or upholding laws and regulations relating to violence against women and girls, in order to prevent and respond to such violence in a gender-responsive manner, to end impunity and to avoid the abuse of power leading to violence against women and girls and the revictimization of victims/survivors of such violence;

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

Exercising due diligence and ensuring legislation to prevent, investigate, prosecute and hold to account the perpetrators of all forms of violence against women and girls, to eliminate impunity and to provide for effective access to appropriate remedies and reparations for victims and survivors, ensuring the protection of women and girls, including adequate enforcement of civil remedies, orders of protection and criminal sanctions, and the provision of shelters, mental health and psychosocial services, counselling, health-care services and other types of support services, in order to avoid revictimization, promoting an empowering environment, and in doing so contributing to the enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by women and girls subjected to violence;

Removing all barriers to women’s access to justice and accountability mechanisms and ensuring that they all have access to information about their rights as well as effective legal assistance so that they can make informed decisions regarding, inter alia, legal proceedings and issues relating to family law, and also ensuring that they have access to just and effective victim-centred remedies for the harm that they have suffered, including formal and appropriate informal justice mechanisms, as provided for by national legislation and, where necessary, the adoption of national legislation, bearing in mind that victims and survivors may be subjected to further discrimination or reprisals;

Providing relevant, comprehensive and victim-centred legal protection in full respect of human rights to support and assist victims and survivors of all forms of violence, in a gender-responsive manner, including victim and witness protection from reprisals for bringing complaints or giving evidence, within the framework of their national legal systems, including, as appropriate, legislative or other measures, such as addressing gender stereotypes and negative social norms throughout the criminal and civil justice system and law enforcement, taking into account women and girls facing multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination;

Ensuring that services and programmes designed to protect women and girls from violence are accessible to women and girls with disabilities, including those living in institutionalized settings, who are particularly vulnerable to violence, including by ensuring that facilities for such services and programmes are accessible, and disability is mainstreamed in materials and training courses addressed to professionals working on violence against women;

Establishing comprehensive, coordinated, interdisciplinary, accessible and sustained multisectoral services, programmes and responses for all victims and survivors of all forms of violence, including sexual harassment, that are adequately resourced, that are, when possible, in a language that they understand and in which they can communicate and that include effective and coordinated action by, as appropriate, relevant stakeholders, such as the police and the justice sector, as well as providers of legal aid services, health services, shelters, medical and psychological assistance counselling services and protection, and, in cases of girl victims and survivors, ensuring that such services, programmes and responses take into account the best interests of the child;

Establishing and/or strengthening law enforcement, health and social workers’ and counsellors’ response protocols and procedures to ensure that all appropriate actions are coordinated and taken to protect and respond to the needs of victims of violence, to identify acts of violence and to prevent their recurrence or further acts of violence and physical and psychological harm, ensuring that services are responsive to survivors’ needs, including by providing access to female health-care providers, police officers and counsellors if requested, and ensuring and maintaining the privacy of victims and the confidentiality of their reporting;

Taking and implementing further measures to ensure that all officials, including those in leadership positions, responsible for implementing policies and programmes aimed at preventing violence against women and girls, protecting and assisting victims and investigating and punishing acts of violence receive training on gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment, to raise their awareness of gender-specific needs, as well as of the underlying causes and the short- and long-term impact of violence against women and girls, and training on gender-responsive investigation of crimes of violence against women and girls;

Encourages States, in efforts to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls, to work in partnership with the private sector and civil society, including women’s, young women’s, youth-led and community-based organizations, organizations of and led by persons with disabilities, faith-based organizations, rural, Indigenous and feminist groups, women human rights defenders, women journalists and media workers and trade, labour and other professional unions, as well as other relevant stakeholders, and to support initiatives undertaken by them, including by allocating adequate financial resources, aimed at promoting gender equality and inclusion and eliminating violence against women and girls;

Also encourages States to systematically collect, analyse and disseminate data disaggregated by sex, age and other parameters relevant in national contexts, including, where appropriate, administrative data from law enforcement officials, the health sector, the judiciary and other relevant sectors, to consider developing methodologies to collect data on all forms of violence against women and girls, including sexual harassment, in, inter alia, digital contexts, in order to monitor all forms of such violence, such as data on the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim and geographical location, with the involvement of national statistical offices and, where appropriate, in partnership with other actors, including law enforcement agencies, in order to ensure high-quality, reliable and timely disaggregated data and gender statistics to effectively review and implement laws, policies, strategies and preventive and protective measures, while ensuring and maintaining the privacy and the confidentiality of the victims;

Urges the international community, including the United Nations system and, as appropriate, regional and subregional organizations, to support national efforts to promote gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in order to enhance international efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls, through, inter alia, official development assistance, other appropriate assistance as well as South-South and triangular cooperation, such as facilitating the sharing of guidelines, methodologies, lessons learned and best practices, taking into account national priorities;

Stresses the need to continue to take and strengthen the measures necessary to ensure that no individual working within the United Nations system, including its agencies, funds, programmes and entities, is involved in sexual harassment, too often perpetrated against those affected by humanitarian crises, and calling upon the United Nations system to intensify its efforts in this regard to ensure zero tolerance for such violence;

Underscores the critical importance of protecting all persons affected by humanitarian crises, in particular women and children, from any form of sexual exploitation and abuse, including those perpetrated by humanitarian personnel, welcomes the determination of the Secretary-General to fully implement the United Nations policy of zero tolerance for sexual exploitation and abuse, stresses that victims and survivors should be at the core of such efforts, notes the six core principles relating to sexual exploitation and abuse adopted by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, and encourages Member States to make greater efforts to prevent and respond to sexual exploitation and abuse and to ensure that perpetrators are held accountable;

Stresses that, within the United Nations system, adequate resources should be assigned to UN-Women and other bodies, specialized agencies, funds and programmes responsible for the promotion of gender equality, the empowerment of women and the human rights of women and girls and to efforts throughout the United Nations system to prevent and eliminate violence against women and girls, including sexual harassment, calls upon the United Nations system to make the necessary support and resources available, and takes note with appreciation in this regard of the contribution of the Spotlight initiative;

Also stresses the importance of the Secretary-General’s Global Database on Violence against Women, expresses its appreciation to all those States that have provided the Database with information regarding, inter alia, their national policies and legal frameworks aimed at eliminating violence against women and girls and supporting victims of such violence, strongly encourages all States to regularly provide updated information for the Database, and calls upon all relevant entities of the United Nations system to continue to support States, at their request, in the compilation and regular updating of pertinent information and to raise awareness of the Database among all relevant stakeholders, including civil society;

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, with a view to increasing effective support for national efforts to prevent and eliminate sexual harassment;

Requests the Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Council on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences to submit an annual report to the General Assembly at its seventy-eighth and seventy-ninth sessions;

Requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its seventy-ninth session a report containing:

Information provided by the United Nations bodies, funds and programmes and the specialized agencies on their follow-up activities to implement resolution 75/161 and the present resolution, including on their assistance to States in their efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls;

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 sixty-seventh and sixty-eighth sessions, including information provided by the United Nations bodies, funds and programmes and the specialized agencies on recent follow-up activities to implement resolutions 73/148 and 75/161 and the present resolution, and urges United Nations bodies, entities, funds and programmes and the specialized agencies to contribute promptly to that report;

Decides to continue its consideration of the elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls at its seventy-ninth session under the item entitled “Advancement of women”.

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