decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination and violence; 9. Emphasizes that violence against women and girls, including rape, female genital mutilation, incest, early and forced marriage, violence related to commercial sexual exploitation, including trafficking, as well as economic exploitation and other forms of sexual violence, increases their vulnerability to HIV/AIDS, that HIV infection further increases women’s vulnerability to violence, and that violence against women contributes to the conditions fostering the spread of HIV/AIDS; 10. Urges Governments to strengthen initiatives that would increase the capacities of women and adolescent girls to protect themselves from the risk of HIV infection, principally through the provision of health care and health services, including for sexual and reproductive health, and through prevention education that promotes gender equality within a culturally and gender-sensitive framework; 11. Also urges Governments to design and implement programmes to encourage and enable men to adopt safe and responsible sexual and reproductive behaviour, and to use effectively methods to prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS; 12. Reminds Governments that their obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women must be implemented fully with regard to violence against women, taking into account general recommendation No. 19 (1992) on violence against women adopted by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women at its eleventh session, reaffirms their commitment to accelerate the achievement of universal ratification of the Convention, and urges all States that have not yet ratified or acceded to the Convention, to consider doing so, as a matter of priority; 13. Urges States parties to consider signing and ratifying the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; 14. Also urges States parties to limit the extent of any reservations to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, to formulate any such reservations as precisely and as narrowly as possible, to ensure that no reservations are incompatible with the object and purpose of the Convention, to review their reservations regularly with a view to withdrawing them and to withdraw reservations that are contrary to the object and purpose of the Convention; 15. Stresses that States have an affirmative duty to promote and protect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of women and girls and must exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate and punish all acts of violence against women and girls, and calls upon States: (a) To apply international human rights norms and to consider, as a matter of priority, becoming party to international human rights instruments that relate to violence against women and girls, and to implement fully their international obligations; (b) To fully achieve and implement the goals set and commitments made relating to eliminating violence against women contained in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action adopted by the Fourth World Conference on Women and the outcome of the page 4