Also urges States, with the collaboration of relevant stakeholders, to ensure that the basic humanitarian needs of affected populations and families, including clean water, sanitation, food, shelter, energy, health, including sexual and reproductive health, nutrition, education and protection, are addressed as critical components of humanitarian response, and to ensure that civil registration and vital statistics are an integral part of humanitarian assessments and that livelihoods are protected, recognizing that poverty and lack of economic opportunities for women and girls are among the drivers of child, early and forced marriage;

Expresses its great concern that, while women contribute more than 50 per cent of the food produced worldwide, they also account for 70 per cent of the world's hungry, that women and girls are disproportionately affected by hunger, food insecurity and poverty, in part as a result of gender inequality and discrimination, that in many countries girls are twice as likely as boys to die from malnutrition and preventable childhood diseases, and that it is estimated that almost twice as many women as men suffer from malnutrition;

Encourages all States to mainstream a gender perspective in food security programmes and to take action to address de jure and de facto gender inequality and discrimination against women, in particular where such inequality and discrimination contribute to the malnutrition of women and girls, including by taking measures to ensure the full and equal realization of the right to food and ensuring that women and girls have equal access to social protection and resources, including income, land and water, and their ownership, and full and equal access to health care, education, science and technology, to enable them to feed themselves and their families, and in this regard stresses the need to empower women and to strengthen their role in decision-making;

Stresses that States should take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of education and employment and to tackle any legal, social or structural barrier to employment opportunities, such as in education, health, work and life balance and lack of maternity protection, in order to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, the same rights, including in particular the rights to work, the same employment opportunities, promotion, free choice of profession and employment, job security and all benefits and conditions of service, and the rights to receive vocational training and retraining, equal remuneration, equal treatment in respect to work of equal value, social security and protection of health and safety in working conditions;

Further urges States to promote, respect and protect the human rights of all women and girls, including their right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination and violence, and to adopt and accelerate the implementation of laws, policies and programmes that protect and enable the enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms, including 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;

Recognizes that child, early and forced marriage constitutes a violation, abuse or impairment of human rights and a harmful practice that prevents individuals from living their lives free from all forms of violence, and that it has wide-ranging and adverse consequences for the enjoyment of human rights, such as the right to education and the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including sexual and reproductive health, and that every girl and woman at risk of or affected by these practices must have equal access to quality education, counselling, shelter and other social services, psychological, sexual and reproductive health-care services and medical care;

[Calls upon States to take immediate and effective action to prevent violence against women and girls by:] Strengthening measures to prevent and eliminate violence against and victimization of women and girls living with, at risk of or affected by HIV, and integrating such measures into comprehensive HIV policies and programmes, while fully engaging men and boys to recognize that gender equality and positive social norms promote effective responses to HIV;

[Calls upon States to take immediate and effective action to prevent violence against women and girls by:] 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 strengthening health systems that make quality comprehensive sexual and reproductive health-care services, commodities, information and education universally accessible and available, including, inter alia, 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 the prevention and treatment of reproductive tract infections, sexually transmitted infections, HIV and reproductive cancers, and recognizing that human rights include the right to have control over and to decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free from coercion, discrimination and violence;

Also calls upon States to promote, respect and protect the rights of women and girls to education through enhanced emphasis on quality education, and to ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, information and education, as set out in target 3.7 of the 2030 Agenda, and to promote school enrolment and retention among girls, including in secondary school, and by allowing access to education services for children who have been forced to flee their homes, schools and communities, and to ensure that schools offer them safe and supportive environments;

Urges States to ensure the promotion, protection and the fulfilment of all human rights and the full and effective implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the outcome documents of their review conferences and of sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights in this context, and to promote, protect and fulfil the right of all women to have full control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality and sexual and reproductive health, free from discrimination, coercion and violence, including through the removal of legal barriers and the development and enforcement of policies, good practices and legal frameworks that respect the right to decide autonomously in matters regarding their own lives and health, including their bodies, and to ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health, services, information and education, including for family planning, 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, safe abortion where not against national law and the prevention and treatment of reproductive tract infections, sexually transmitted infections, HIV and reproductive cancers and the integration of sexual and reproductive health into national strategies and programmes;

Calls upon States to promote and protect the right of women and girls to equal access to education through enhanced emphasis on free and quality primary and secondary education, including catch-up and literacy education for those who have not received formal education or have left school early, including because of marriage and/or childbearing, which empowers young women and girls to make informed decisions about their lives, employment, economic opportunities and health, including through scientifically accurate, age-appropriate comprehensive education, relevant to cultural contexts, that provides adolescent girls and boys and young women and men, in and out of school, consistent with their evolving capacities, with information on sexual and reproductive health, gender equality and the empowerment of women, human rights, physical, psychological and pubertal development and power in relationships between women and men, to enable them to build self-esteem and 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 contribute to ending child, early and forced marriage;

Calls upon States to progressively realize the full enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including sexual and reproductive health, and to eliminate legal, administrative, financial and social barriers that hinder universal access to available, accessible, acceptable, timely, affordable and quality health services for women and girls through gender-responsive national strategies and public-health policies and programmes that are comprehensive, affordable and better targeted to addressing their needs;

Calls upon concerned Governments to allocate resources, as appropriate, to provide access to appropriate programmes for the physical, psychological and social recovery of victims of trafficking, including sexual and reproductive health-care services that include affordable treatment, care and support services for HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections, free of stigma and discrimination, as well as comprehensive information and voluntary counselling, and to take measures to cooperate with intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations to provide for the social, medical and psychological care of the victims in ways that protect their privacy and identity;

Stresses that the empowerment of women and girls is key to breaking the cycle of discrimination and violence and for the promotion and protection of human rights, including the right to the highest attainable standard of mental and physical health, including sexual and reproductive health, and calls upon States parties to fulfil their obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, as well as their commitments to implement the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcomes of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly, entitled "Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century", and of the special session of the General Assembly on children;

Also urges States to complement punitive measures with awareness-raising and educational activities designed to promote a process of consensus towards the elimination of female genital mutilation, and further urges States to protect and support women and girls who have been subjected to female genital mutilation and those at risk, including by developing social and psychological support services and care and appropriate remedies, and to take measures to improve their health, including sexual and reproductive health, in order to assist women and girls who are subjected to the practice;

Urges States to ensure that the protection and provision of support to women and girls subject to, or at risk of, female genital mutilation are an integral part of policies and programmes that address the practice, and to provide women and girls with coordinated, specialized, accessible and quality multisectoral prevention and response, including education, as well as legal, psychological, health-care and social services, provided by qualified personnel, consistent with the guidelines of medical ethics;

Calls upon all governments to promote universal health coverage, as part of a comprehensive social protection package, which implies that all people have equal access, without discrimination of any kind, to nationally determined sets of the quality promotive, preventive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative basic health services needed and to essential, safe, affordable, effective and quality medicines, especially through the promotion of primary health care, while ensuring that the use of those services does not expose the users to financial hardship, with a specific emphasis on women, children and the poor, vulnerable and marginalized segments of the population;

Requests governments to make available comprehensive data disaggregated by age, sex and other characteristics relevant in national contexts to inform targeted responses to the gender dimensions of HIV and AIDS;

Encourages the international community and research institutions to support action-oriented research on gender and HIV and AIDS including on female-controlled prevention commodities;

Requests the Secretary-General to submit a progress report on the implementation of the present resolution to the sixty-second session of the Commission on the Status of Women.

Calls upon States to assess accountability mechanisms, where they exist, in relation to maternal mortality and morbidity, including the monitoring of inequities, while ensuring access to justice for women and girls, and to build accountability into interventions and strategies, to monitor the functioning and effectiveness of those mechanisms and processes and to take remedial action to ensure they are responsive to human rights;

Also urges States to adopt a holistic approach to maternal health, one of the elements of the full spectrum of women’s health, by reducing maternal mortality and morbidity by promoting access to family planning and proper prenatal care, skilled attendance at birth, postnatal care and methods of prevention, including affordable treatment and support services for sexually transmitted infections, such as HIV/AIDS, free of stigma and discrimination;

Reiterates that States should take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of health care in order to ensure, on the basis of equality of men and women, access to health-care services, including those related to family planning, and that States should ensure for women appropriate services in connection with pregnancy, confinement and the postnatal period, granting free services where necessary, as well as adequate nutrition during pregnancy and lactation;

Further urges States to ensure equal access to and equal treatment of women and men in education and health care, and to enhance women’s sexual and reproductive health as well as education, including by, inter alia, training health providers and other health-care workers on gender equality and non-discrimination, respect for women’s rights and dignity, in lifesaving obstetric care and when giving birth, especially midwives and auxiliary nurses, ensuring the affordability of medicines and treatments, avoiding the overmedicalization of women’s health, acknowledging alternative medicine, abolishing discriminatory practices that hinder women’s access to health services, and providing age-appropriate, sexual health information, education and counselling, based on scientific evidence and human rights, for women, girls, men and boys;

Urges governments to eliminate gender inequalities and gender-based abuse and violence, increase the capacity of women and adolescent girls to protect themselves from the risk of HIV infection, principally through the provision of health care and services, including, inter alia, sexual and reproductive health care, as well as full access to comprehensive information and education, ensure that women can exercise their right to have control over, and decide freely and responsibly on, matters related to their sexuality, including their sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination and violence, in order to increase their ability to protect themselves from HIV infection, and take all necessary measures to create an enabling environment for the empowerment of women and strengthen their economic independence and, in that context, reiterates the importance of the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality;

Calls upon governments to accelerate efforts to scale up scientifically accurate age-appropriate comprehensive education, relevant to cultural contexts, that provides adolescent girls and boys and young women and men, in and out of school, consistent with their evolving capacities, with information on sexual and reproductive health and HIV prevention, gender equality and women's empowerment, human rights, physical, psychological and pubertal development and power in relationships between women and men, to enable them to build self-esteem, informed decision-making, communication and risk reduction skills and develop respectful relationships, in full partnership with young persons, parents, legal guardians, caregivers, educators and health-care providers, in order to enable them to protect themselves from HIV infection;

Also urges States to ensure 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, inter alia, 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, and 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;

Establishing, as appropriate, comprehensive, coordinated, interdisciplinary, accessible and sustained multisectoral services, programmes and responses at all levels, with the support of all available technologies, for all victims and survivors of all forms of violence against women and girls based on their needs, that are adequately resourced and include effective and coordinated action by, as appropriate, the police and the justice sector, legal aid services, health-care services, including sexual and reproductive health, and medical, psychological and other counselling services, including specialist services as appropriate, State and independent women’s shelters and counselling centres, 24-hour hotlines, social aid services, one-stop crisis centres, immigration services, child services, public housing services to provide low-threshold, easy-to-reach and safe assistance for women and children, as well as assistance, protection and support through access to long-term accommodation, educational, employment and economic opportunities, and to take steps to ensure the safety and security of health-care workers and service providers who assist and support victims and survivors of violence and, in cases of girl victims, to ensure that such services and responses take into account the best interests of the child;

Requests governments, the private sector, the international donor community and funds, programmes and agencies of the United Nations to intensify financial and technical support for national efforts to end AIDS and achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, focused on women and girls affected by the HIV and AIDS epidemic, and also to intensify financial and technical support for mainstreaming gender and human rights perspectives in policies, planning, programmes, monitoring and evaluation;

[Calls upon States to take effective action to prevent and eliminate domestic violence without delay, including by:] 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;