States must repeal all laws that discriminate against women

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Penang, 18 Jul (Kanaga Raja) — The UN Human Rights Council has urged States to repeal all laws and policies that exclusively or disproportionately target or criminalize the actions or behaviour of women and girls, as well as those that discriminate against them “on the basis of any grounds, including any custom, tradition or misuse of culture or religion.”

This call came in a rather comprehensive 10-page resolution (A/HRC/56/L.25/Rev.1), adopted as orally revised without a vote, at the closing of the 56th regular session of the Human Rights Council on 12 July.

In its resolution, the Council also urged States to “create accountability mechanisms to end impunity and prevent, eliminate and remedy the discriminatory application of the law.”

In its resolution on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and girls, the Human Rights Council acknowledged that eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including women’s and girls’ poverty, is still one of the greatest global challenges and an indispensable requirement for the achievement of sustainable development.

It recalled in this regard the Third United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (2018-2027) and the guiding principles on extreme poverty and human rights as useful tools to support States in their efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

It highlighted that the upcoming Summit of the Future, to be held in September 2024, and the Second World Summit for Social Development, to be held in 2025, will provide opportunities for States to reaffirm their commitment to eliminating all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls, accelerate action to achieve gender equality in all domains and eradicate poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty.

It underscored the fact that international human rights law prohibits discrimination, inter alia, on the basis of gender, and that national legislation, policies and practices should comply with States’ international obligations.

The Council recalled that discrimination against women and girls constitutes a human rights violation or abuse and undermines the principle of equality and that States should ensure effective measures to promote substantive equality and non-discrimination, including by taking into account and addressing the multidimensional nature of inequality, pre-existing gender inequalities and their root causes.

It expressed profound concern at the escalating backlash against progress made by States, international and regional organizations, Indigenous Peoples and civil society organizations, including women’s and girls’ rights and community-based organizations, feminist groups, organizations of Indigenous women and girls, women of African descent and peasant and other women in rural areas, organizations of women and girls with disabilities and girl- and youth-led organizations, as well as women and girl human rights defenders, including environmental human rights defenders, journalists, trade unions and other relevant actors, to respect, protect and fulfil all human rights.

It recognized that these retrogressions are linked to poverty, economic crisis and inequality, racial discrimination, negative social norms and gender stereotypes, retrogressive lobbies, ideological views or the misuse of culture or religion to oppose women’s and girls’ equal rights, as well as to shrink civic space.

The Council was deeply concerned about the fact that 1 in every 10 women in the world lives in extreme poverty, that women and girls face higher poverty rates and that extreme poverty and inequality persist in all countries of the world, regardless of their economic, social and cultural situation, while their extent and manifestations are particularly severe in developing countries.

It recognized that poverty is also a gendered phenomenon, and that structural gender discrimination may exist in the design and implementation of laws and economic policies at the global, regional and national levels.

It recognized also that the empowerment of and investment in girls are critical, including for the eradication of poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty, that the strengthening of women’s voices, agency and leadership are among the key factors in breaking the cycle of gender inequality, in eliminating all forms of discrimination, violence and poverty and in promoting and protecting the full and effective enjoyment of their human rights and fundamental freedoms, and that the empowerment of girls requires their active participation in decision-making processes and as agents of change in their own lives and communities.

The Council recognized further that women and girls experience multidimensional forms of poverty throughout their life course, that adolescent girls fare worse than adolescent boys at higher poverty thresholds, due to factors such as unintended pregnancy, single motherhood child, early and forced marriage and lack of access to quality education, health services, decent work and economic resources, and that single-headed households headed by women and especially by adolescent girls are at a greater risk of poverty.

It recognized that women living in poverty face a higher likelihood of career disruptions, part-time employment, occupational segregation, lower earnings, concentration in the informal sector and unequal distribution of unpaid care and support and domestic work, with less protection in terms of labour rights, safe working conditions and social benefits, such as a pension, health insurance or paid sick leave, resulting in older women having fewer assets, savings and social protection benefits.

The Council recalled that gender-based violence is a pervasive form of discrimination, and recognized that poverty undermines human dignity and exacerbates the risk to women and girls of suffering all forms of violence, including sexual and gender-based violence.

It underscored that poverty reduction strategies that are not gender-responsive may perpetuate gender stereotypes and harmful social norms and the structural inequalities that flow from them, and that, while predominant approaches to women’s poverty usually focus on economic rights associated with work, financial inclusion and women’s entrepreneurship, approaches to women’s poverty need to analyse the systems of power that generate and reproduce unequal gender relations within families, communities, institutions and markets and that fail to recognize and value women’s unpaid care, support, domestic and agricultural work, which undergirds the economy.

It affirmed that substantive equality is central to eradicating the feminization of poverty, and that it requires committing to the elimination of the root causes of structural discrimination, including deep-rooted patriarchal systems and gender stereotypes, harmful gender norms, negative social norms, negative cultural patterns of conduct, sociopolitical and economic inequalities and systemic racism, as well as deeply entrenched social norms and expectations of gender roles that perpetuate unequal power relations, discriminatory attitudes, behaviours, norms, perceptions, customs, disregard for women’s and girls’ dignity, bodily integrity and autonomy, sexual and gender-based violence and harmful practices, such as female genital mutilation and child, early and forced marriage, including during humanitarian crises or emergencies.

The Council recognized that poverty, gender inequality and gender-based discrimination hinder the full enjoyment of the right to an adequate standard of living and other inter-related economic, social and cultural rights by women and girls.

It underscored that the lack of access to inclusive and quality education for all women and girls throughout their life course, including women and girls living in poverty, may impede women from acquiring access to the formal labour market, forcing them to engage in precarious, informal and low paid work, creating a poverty trap and perpetuating inter-generational poverty, while recognizing that the right to education, and access to inclusive and quality education, including through safe and secure digital technologies that improve and supplement teaching, rather than replace in-person education, has a transformative potential and is a multiplier right that supports the empowerment of all women and girls to realize their human rights, including the right to participate in the conduct of public affairs, as well as in economic, social and cultural life, and to fully, equally and meaningfully participate in the decision-making processes that shape society.

It stressed that women and girls are disproportionately affected by hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition, which are exacerbated by gender inequality and discrimination, and that unequal access to food, nutrition and safe drinking water and sanitation is also linked to gender-based discrimination in the allocation of land rights, agricultural input, seeds and other natural resources in rural areas, while acknowledging that women represent the majority of agricultural workers and that they contribute to the majority of the food produced globally.

The Council was deeply concerned that large numbers of women and girls around the world, in particular those living in poverty or experiencing homelessness or displacement, continue to face “menstrual poverty”, which includes, inter alia, the inability to access and/or afford menstrual products, sanitation and hygiene facilities and medicines and treatment for menstruation-related health issues or pain and which can result from unequal access to safe drinking water and sanitation by women and girls and from barriers to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.

It was deeply concerned also that women and girls, including adolescent girls and women and girls with disabilities, living in poverty are at increased risk of sexual and gender-based violence, harmful practices, trafficking in persons, unintended and unwanted pregnancy, maternal mortality and morbidity and unsafe abortion because of, inter alia, lack of access to available, accessible, acceptable and quality health services, including sexual and reproductive health services, lack of evidence-based information and education, lack of access to perinatal care, including skilled health personnel, and emergency obstetric care, combined with stereotypes and taboos.

It was deeply concerned that girls and young women, in particular those experiencing poverty, continue to lack the same opportunities as boys and young men to participate in and learn about the social, economic and political functioning of society, and that they are often directly or indirectly discouraged from taking part in decision- making processes, in particular in the formulation and design of public policies related to the eradication of poverty, and the subsequent implementation and evaluation phases.

The Council recognized also that new technological developments can perpetuate existing patterns of poverty, inequality and discrimination and all forms of violence, including gender-based violence, that occurs through or is amplified by the use of technology, in the absence of effective safeguards and oversight, including in the algorithms used in artificial intelligence-based solutions, that addressing gender-related bias in technology can contribute to the eradication of poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty and in particular the feminization of poverty, and that therefore a gender-responsive approach should be taken in the design, development, deployment and use of digital technology-related policies with full respect for human rights.

It recognized further the potential of such new technological developments, with effective safeguards and oversight, to enable and accelerate the progress towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, including Goal 5, on achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls, and emphasized the need for the expansion of the efforts to close the gender digital divide and to ensure that such efforts are grounded in digital equity, access and affordability.

The Council highlighted that poverty and inequalities are structural phenomena that negatively affect sustainable development and impede effective responses to the multiple and inter-related crisis and risks posed by, inter alia, climate change, environmental pollution and biodiversity loss, natural and human-made disasters, public health emergencies, situations of armed conflict and occupation and economic crises, which in turn exacerbate women’s and girls’ experiences of poverty and gender inequalities, as well as gender-based discrimination and violence.

The Council called upon States:

(a) 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;

(b) 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;

(c) 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;

(d) 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.

The Council took 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.

The Council urged States:

(a) To 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;

(b) To consider reviewing all proposed and existing legislation in accordance with their international human rights obligations, using an inter-sectional 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;

(c) 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;

(d) 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;

(e) To remove political, legal, social, practical, structural, cultural, economic, institutional and physical barriers, 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;

(f) 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;

(g) 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;

(h) 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;

(i) 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;

(j) 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;

(k) 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 under-representation 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.

The Council called upon States to implement policies and actions:

(a) 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;

(b) 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;

(c) 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.

The Council recognized that the reduction of socioeconomic inequalities is an essential element of effective action to overcome poverty among women and girls, and reaffirmed 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.

It called 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:

(a) 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;

(b) 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;

(c) 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;

(d) 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;

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

(f) 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;

(g) 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;

(h) Developing and implementing appropriate gender-responsive systems to measure intra-household 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;

(i) 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;

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

(k) 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;

(l) 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;

(m) 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.

The Council encouraged 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.

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

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

(b) 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;

(c) 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.

The Council requested 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 welcomed 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.

It requested 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. – Third World Network