CEDAW/C/GC/37
38. States parties should ensure that legal frameworks are non-discriminatory
and that all women have effective access to justice, in line with general
recommendation No. 33, including by:
(a) Conducting a gender impact analysis of current laws, incorporating
those that are applied in plural legal systems, including customary, traditional
and religious norms and practices, to assess their effect on women with regard
to their vulnerability to disaster risk and climate change, and adopt, repeal or
amend laws, norms and practices accordingly;
(b) Increasing awareness among women of the available legal remedies
and dispute resolution mechanisms and their legal literacy, by providing them
with information on their rights and on policies and programmes relating to
disaster risk reduction and climate change and empowering them to exercise
their right to information in that context;
(c) Ensuring affordable or, if necessary, free access to legal services,
including legal aid, as well as to official documents such as birth, death and
marriage certificates and land registration documents and deeds. Reliable and
low-cost administrative systems should be implemented to make such
documentation accessible and available to women in situations of disaster so that
they are able to benefit from such services as relief payments and compensation;
(d) Dismantling barriers to women’s access to justice by ensuring that
formal and informal justice mechanisms, including alternative dispute resolution
mechanisms, are in conformity with the Convention and made available and
accessible, in order to enable women to claim their rights. Measures to protect
women from reprisals when claiming their rights should also be developed;
(e) Minimizing disruptions to legal and justice systems that may result
from disasters and climate change, by developing response plans that provide for
the deployment of mobile or specialized reporting mechanisms, investigative
teams and courts. Flexible and accessible legal and judicial mechanisms are of
particular importance for women and girls wishing to report incidents of genderbased violence.
V. Specific principles of the Convention relevant to disaster
risk reduction and climate change
A.
Assessment and data collection
39. The gender-related dimensions of disaster risk reduction and the impacts of
climate change are often not well understood. Limited technical capacity at the
national and local levels has resulted in a lack of data disaggr egated by sex, age,
disability, ethnicity and geographical location, which continues to impede the
development of appropriate and targeted strategies for disaster risk reduction and
climate change response.
40.
States parties should:
(a) Establish or identify existing national and local mechanisms to collect,
analyse and manage, and for the application of, data disaggregated by sex, age,
disability, ethnicity and region. Such data should be made publicly available and
used to inform gender-responsive national and regional disaster risk reduction
and climate resilience legislation, policies, programmes and budgets;
(b) Develop, on the basis of disaggregated data, specific and genderresponsive indicators and monitoring mechanisms to enable States parties to
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