E/2014/27 E/CN.6/2014/15 and girls undermine effective HIV responses and the need to give full attention to increasing the capacity of women and adolescent girls to protect themselves from the risk of HIV infection, including through the provision of health-care services, inter alia, sexual and reproductive health-care services. It further notes the challenges faced by women and girls living with HIV and AIDS, including stigma, discrimination and violence. The Commission further notes that, despite increased global and national investments in malaria control, which have resulted in decreasing the burden of malaria in many countries and the elimination of malaria in some countries, malaria prevention and control efforts, particularly for pregnant women, must rapidly increase in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. 25. The Commission notes that with regard to Millennium Development Goal 7 (environmental sustainability), while progress has been made globally in access to safe drinking water, progress on access to basic sanitation has been particularly slow, and the target is likely to be missed, with serious implications for women and girls, especially those living in vulnerable conditions. The Commission expresses concern that the lack of access to safe drinking water particularly affects women and girls and that they frequently bear the burden for its collection in rural and urban areas, and further recognizes the need for further improvement in this regard. The Commission further notes that the lack of adequate sanitation facilities disproportionately affects women and girls, including their labour force and school participation rates, and increases their vulnerability to violence. The Commission further notes that women and girls are often disproportionally affected by desertification, deforestation, natural disasters and climate change owing to gender inequalities and the dependence of many women on natural resources for their livelihoods. 26. The Commission notes with regard to Millennium Development Goal 8 (developing a global partnership for development) that the development resources, including official development assistance, in support of gender equality and women’s empowerment are essential and remain inadequate to the task. The Commission also notes that the global economic crisis and the shifts to austerity measures taken by some countries have impacted women and girls negatively, with a reduction in investment in social sectors. It also notes that a gender gap in access to information and communications technologies persists. 27. The Commission is concerned that several indicators to monitor the Millennium Development Goals are not disaggregated by sex, age and other factors and therefore do not provide sufficient information about the situation of women and girls throughout their life cycle, including those on poverty, hunger, environmental sustainability and a global partnership for development, while others are still limited, such as those related to goal 3, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. 28. The Commission is concerned that several critical issues related to gender equality and the empowerment of women were not adequately addressed by the Millennium Development Goals such as, inter alia: violence against women and girls; child, early and forced marriage; women’s and girls’ disproportionate share of unpaid work, particularly unpaid care work; women’s access to decent work, the gender wage gap, employment in the informal 14-02869 11/95