Plan International - Girls' Rights Platform - Girls' rights are human rights: Positioning girls at the heart of the international agenda

35. Invites Governments, with the support of the United Nations, when necessary, and other intergovernmental organizations, taking into account best practices, to formulate training manuals and other informational materials and provide training for law enforcement, judicial and other relevant officers, and medical and support personnel, with a view to sensitizing them to the special needs of women and girl victims;

(f) Ensuring that all actors involved in or attempting to commit violence against women and girls are held accountable and brought to justice, taking into account the multi- jurisdictional and transnational nature of violence against women and girls in digital contexts;

Recognizing the impact of cluster munitions on women, men, girls and boys and the importance of relevant States providing adequate, gender- and age-sensitive assistance to victims of cluster munitions,

44. We reaffirm our commitment to support developing country efforts to ensure that all children have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality, to eliminate gender inequality and imbalance and to renew efforts to improve girls’ education. We also commit ourselves to continuing to support the efforts of developing countries in the implementation of the Education for All initiative, including with enhanced resources of all types through the Education for All fast-track initiative in support of country-led national education plans.

(e) The continuing violence and discrimination against women and girls in law and in practice, the refusal of the Guardian Council to take steps to address this systemic discrimination and recent arrests of and violent crackdowns on women exercising their right of assembly;

20. Also urges States to forge partnerships with relevant stakeholders, particularly by working with and involving communities in developing programmes and mechanisms designed to ensure the safety and protection as well as the empowerment of children, especially girls, and to ensure that they receive the support they need from their communities;

Recognizing further the challenges and obstacles to changing discriminatory attitudes, negative social norms and gender stereotypes, which perpetuate multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination against women and girls and stereotypical roles of men and women, and stressing that challenges and obstacles remain in the implementation of international standards and norms to eliminate gender inequality,

30. Urges the United Nations system and other international organizations, upon the request of Member States, to support and promote innovative programme responses to ensure women’s access to decent work, to recognize, reduce and redistribute the unequal burden of unpaid care and domestic work, to promote gender- responsive social protection initiatives and measures for women and girls and to support and encourage the scaling-up of existing good practice programmes and initiatives;

37. Welcomes the implementation of the agreement between the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN -Women) and the International Organization of la Francophonie, as well as their cooperation, in particular in such areas as women’s participation in political decision-making and in economic, social and cultural life, advocacy for the equality of women and men, the integration of gender equality into sustainable development and combating violence and sexual exploitation and abuse against women and girls, and invites the two institutions to strengthen their cooperation in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development;

Reaffirming that the full enjoyment of all human rights by all women and girls includes their right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters relating to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free from coercion, discrimination and violence, and that equal relationships in matters of sexuality, sexual relations and reproduction, including full respect for the dignity, integrity and bodily autonomy and agency of the person, require mutual respect, consent and shared responsibility for sexual behaviour and its consequences, in accordance with applicable international human rights standards,

11. Also urges States to ensure the national implementation of international and regional commitments and obligations undertaken as States parties to various international instruments protecting the full enjoyment of all human rights and the fundamental freedoms of women and girls;

(ff) Taking appropriate measures to adopt or develop legislation and policies that provide rural women with access to land and support women’s cooperatives and agricultural programmes, including for subsistence agriculture, in order to contribute to school feeding programmes as a pull factor to keep children, in particula r girl children, in school, noting that school meals and take-home rations attract and retain children in schools and recognizing that school feeding is an incentive to enhance enrolment and reduce absenteeism, especially for girls;

16. Strongly urges the Islamic Republic of Iran to eliminate, in law and in practice, all forms of discrimination and other human rights violations against women and girls, including with respect to the right to freedom of movement, the right to enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, the right to freedom of religion or belief and the right to work, to take measures to ensure protection for women and girls against violence and their equal protection and access to justice, to address the concerning incidence of child, early and forced marriage, as recommended by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, to promote, support and enable women’s participation in political and other decision-making processes, and, while recognizing the high enrolment of women in all levels of education in the Islamic Republic of Iran, to lift restrictions on women’s equal access to all aspects of education and women’s equal participation in the labour market and in all aspects of economic, cultural, social and political life;

15. Urges the Venezuelan authorities to adopt appropriate measures to address reported acts of violence and harassment, sexual violence against women and girls in detention in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which includes accounts of physical, sexual and verbal abuse, threats and intimidation, the sexual exploitation of women and girls for food, protection and privileges, and the ill-treatment, torture and denial of rights of women human rights defenders, nurses, teachers and civil servants, women political prisoners and detainees in detention centres;

(f) To mainstream a gender perspective into our criminal justice systems by developing and implementing national strategies and plans to promote the full protection of women and girls from all acts of violence, including gender-related killing of women and girls, in accordance with the obligations of parties under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women 15 and the Optional Protocol thereto, 16 and taking into account the updated Model Strategies and Practical Measures on the Elimination of Violence against Women in the Field of Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice 17 and General Assembly resolutions on the gender-related killing of women and girls;

1. Requests all States to renew their political commitment to eliminate preventable maternal mortality and morbidity at the local, national, regional and international levels, and to redouble their efforts to ensure the full and effective implementation of their human rights obligations, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and its review processes, including the commitments relating to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, and the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals, in particular the goals on improving maternal health and promoting gender equality and empowering women, including through the allocation of necessary domestic resources to health systems and the provision of the necessary information and health services addressing the sexual and reproductive health of women and girls;

13. Also urges Governments to promote and protect the human rights of all women and girls, including the right of women, and those girls who have been subjected to child, early and forced marriage, 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, 8 the Beijing Platform for Action 9 and the outcome documents of their review conferences;

7. Encourages all States to take action to address discrimination against women, particularly where it contributes to the malnutrition of women and girls, including measures to ensure the realization of the right to food and ensuring that women have equal access to resources, including income, land and water, to enable them to feed themselves;

12. Also calls upon States to develop policies and measures that promote access to education for persons with disabilities and to strengthen education systems that are fully inclusive of girls with disabilities to reduce the risk of social exclusion and poverty, which could have long-term implications for their capacity and opportunity to participate in labour markets;

(c) To assign adequate resources within the United Nations system to those bodies, specialized agencies, funds and programmes responsible for the promotion of gender equality and women’s rights and to efforts throughout the United Nations system to eliminate violence against women and girls and design programmes to provide assistance to victims, including children born as a result;

Recognizing further the imperative need to engage women and girls in the practice of sport and to enhance, to this end, their participation in sporting events at the national and international levels,

2. Stresses that States have the obligation to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms of women and girls, and must exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate, prosecute and punish the perpetrators of violence against women and girls and provide protection and support to women and girls who have been subjected to violence, and that failure to do so violates and impairs or nullifies the enjoyment of their human rights and fundamental freedoms;

Reaffirming further that the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women 7 and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Optional Protocols thereto, 9 as well as other relevant conventions and treaties, provide an international legal framework and a comprehensive set of measures for the elimination and prevention of all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls and for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women,

Reaffirming that female genital mutilations are a harmful practice that constitutes a serious threat to the health of women and girls, including their psychological, sexual and reproductive health, which can increase their vulnerability to HIV and may have adverse obstetric and prenatal outcomes as well as fatal consequences for the mother and the newborn, and that the abandonment of this harmful practice can be achieved as a result of a comprehensive movement that involves all public and private stakeholders in society, including girls and boys, women and men,

9. Also stresses the importance of ensuring that, in armed conflict and post- conflict situations and in natural disaster situations, the prevention of and response to all forms of violence against women and girls, including sexual and gender -based violence, are prioritized and effectively addressed, including, as appropriate, through the investigation, prosecution and punishment of perpetrators to end impunity, the removal of barriers to women’s access to justice, the establishment of complaint and reporting mechanisms and the provision of support to victims an d survivors;

Reiterating the need for Member States, relevant United Nations organizations and other relevant actors to mainstream a gender perspective into humanitarian assistance, including by addressing the specific needs of men, women, boys and girls in a comprehensive and consistent manner,

Commending UN-Women for the continued support provided to intergovernmental processes, including on the linkages between sustainable development, financing for development and the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls,

44. Urges States to promote the integration of a gender perspective into environmental and climate change policies and to strengthen mechanisms and provide adequate resources to ensure the full and equal participation of women in all levels of decision-making on environmental issues, and stresses the need to address the challenges for women and girls posed by climate change;

58. Urges multilateral donors and invites international financial institutions, within their respective mandates, and regional development banks to review and implement policies that support national efforts to ensure that a higher proportion of resources reaches women and girls, in particular in rural and remote areas;

16. Further urges States to forge partnerships with relevant stakeholders, particularly by working with and involving communities in developing programmes and mechanisms designed to ensure the safety and protection as well as the empowerment of children, especially girls, in child-headed households, and to ensure that they receive the support, including psychosocial support, they need from their communities;