A/HRC/29/40
(iv) Develop effective mechanisms to combat the multiple and intersecting
forms of discrimination suffered by all marginalized women, including
minority women, women living in poverty, women with disabilities, refugee and
displaced women, migrant and immigrant women, rural women, indigenous
women, older women and single women;
(b)
Promote a culture free of discrimination:
(i)
Establish an executive body that applies the due diligence framework
(prevention, protection, prosecution, punishment and redress), addressing all
forms of discrimination against women in cultural and family life, including by
non-State actors;
(ii)
Reject any cultural or religious practice that violates human rights and
the principle of equality or prevents the establishment of an egalitarian society
free of gender-based discrimination;
(iii) Punish institutions, State officials and non-State actors whose actions
threaten women’s rights, even where the grounds for such actions are the
preservation of culture and religion;
(c)
diversity:
Guarantee women’s de jure and de facto right to equality in family
(i)
Recognize and protect, in their constitutions and laws, all forms of
family, and affirm and protect women and girls’ right to equality in family
diversity, by adopting and implementing appropriate measures to protect
women from exploitation and discrimination in diverse families, particularly
women living in vulnerable situations;
(ii)
Eliminate in law and in practice all forms of marriage that restrict
and/or deny women and girls’ rights, well-being and dignity, including early
and/or forced marriage, polygamous marriage and temporary marriage;
(iii) Establish appropriate solutions, remedies and redress to ensure respect
for the rights and well-being of women and girls living in the forms of marriage
referred to above, including the possibility for them to leave such marriages
with their share of the matrimonial assets, custody of their children and the
right to remarry;
(iv) Eliminate all laws or practices that restrict the rights and opportunities
of widows or divorced women, but not widowers or divorced men, to remarry,
work, have guardianship or custody of their children, and own the family
home, assets and land;
(v)
Repeal all laws that support the patriarchal oppression of women in
families, such as laws that exclude marital rape from the crime of rape, laws
that grant pardon to rapists who marry their victims and laws that criminalize
adultery;
(vi) Prohibit and punish domestic violence, including incest and marital
rape, and provide measures to protect women and girls who are victims of such
violence, such as protection orders and shelters;
(vii) Respect, protect, fulfil and promote the right to gender equality in the
family in the various types of legal system – secular family law systems, Stateenforced religious family law systems and plural legal systems. The adoption of
a family code or personal status laws free of any reference to culture or religion
is encouraged;
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GE.15-07003