E/2012/27 E/CN.6/2012/16 21. Encourages Member States and the international community to take measures to protect women and girls, including indigenous and rural women and girls, those living in poverty and those with disabilities, regardless of their immigration status, from gender-based violence and from early and forced marriage, and to fully implement their obligations under national and international law with respect to preventing violence and investigating and punishing the perpetrators, and also encourages Member States and the international community to provide victims with access to appropriate quality, comprehensive, integrated and accessible healthcare services and counselling and to primary and secondary education, and to scale up humanitarian and legal assistance to victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence, including when used as a tactic of war, inter alia, to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity; 22. Calls upon those Member States that have made commitments to advance the Secretary-General’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, 41 undertaken by a broad coalition of partners in support of national plans and strategies, to implement their commitments to significantly reduce the number of maternal, newborn and under-age-five deaths, as a matter of immediate concern, including, as appropriate, by scaling up a priority package of high-impact interventions and integrating efforts in such areas as health, education, gender equality, water and sanitation, poverty reduction and nutrition, and encourages those States that have not yet done so to consider making such commitments; 23. Encourages Member States to consider implementing the recommendations of the Commission on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health to strengthen information on reproductive, maternal and child health, to track resources for women’s and children’s health and to strengthen oversight and transparency; 24. Urges Member States to elaborate and implement comprehensive gendersensitive poverty eradication strategies that address social, structural and macroeconomic issues in order to eliminate preventable maternal mortality and morbidity; 25. Notes with concern the high rate of maternal mortality in armed conflict, in post-conflict countries and in natural disaster situations, where girls and women are at particular risk of gender-based violence, particularly rape and other forms of sexual abuse, which places them at risk of serious infections, such as HIV/AIDS, and of pregnancy that may result in miscarriage and other health problems which, in the absence of health care, can be life-threatening; 26. Encourages Member States, in particular those with persistently high rates of maternal mortality and morbidity, to maximize the efficient use of existing resources for maternal health, to meet commitments, such as those included in the Abuja Declaration, to reduce poverty, increase budgetary allocations towards sexual and reproductive health, education and development programmes that would eliminate preventable maternal mortality and morbidity, including the prevention and treatment of haemorrhage, obstructed labour, obstetric fistula, infection and reproductive cancer, improve the management of complications arising from abortions and promote the health, including sexual and reproductive health, of women and girls; __________________ 41 12-27405 Available from www.everywomaneverychild.org. 21