The girl child
A/RES/70/138
strengthen existing ones to ensure primary health care with an integrated HIV
response and make them more accessible to adolescent girls;
11. Urges all States to develop or review relevant programmes that promote
gender equality and equal access to basic social services, such as education,
nutrition, water and sanitation, birth registration, health care, vaccinations and
protection from diseases representing the major causes of mortality, including
non-communicable diseases, and to mainstream a gender perspective into all
development policies and programmes, including those specific to the girl child;
12. Calls upon States to strengthen the capacity of national health systems,
and in this regard invites the international community to assist national efforts , upon
request, including by allocating adequate resources in order to provide the essential
services needed to prevent obstetric fistula and to treat those cases that occur by
providing the continuum of services, including family planning, prenatal and
postnatal care, skilled birth attendance, emergency obstetric care and po st-partum
care, to adolescent girls, including those living in poverty and in underserved rural
areas where obstetric fistula is most common;
13. Urges all States to enact, uphold and strictly enforce laws and policies
aimed at preventing and ending child, early and forced marriage and protecting
those at risk and to ensure that marriage is entered into only with the informed, free
and full consent of the intending spouses, to enact and strictly enforce laws
concerning the minimum legal age of consent and the minimum age for marriage, to
raise the minimum age for marriage, engage all relevant stakeholders, including
girls, where necessary, and ensure that these laws are well known, to further develop
and implement holistic, comprehensive and coordinated policies, plans of action and
programmes and to support already married girls and adolescents and ensure the
provision of viable alternatives and institutional support, especially educational
opportunities for girls, to ensure the survival, protection, develo pment and
advancement of the girl child in order to promote and protect the full enjoyment of
her human rights and to ensure equal opportunities for girls, including by making
such plans an integral part of her total development process;
14. Urges States to ensure that the rights of children in child -headed
households are respected and that the heads of such households exercise all the
rights of the child and to further ensure that children in child -headed households,
particularly girls, receive the support they need to ensure their continued attendance
in school consistent with their age;
15. Also urges States to ensure that efforts to enact and implement legislation
to protect, support and empower child-headed households, in particular those
headed by girls, include provisions to ensure their economic well -being, including
protecting their property and inheritance rights, access to health-care services,
nutrition, clean water, including safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, shelter
and education, and inheritance, and that the family is protected and assisted in
staying together;
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;
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