A/HRC/53/39 30. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women contains multiple provisions on the right to substantive gender equality. These include a broad definition of discrimination against women, temporary special measures to accelerate equality of opportunities and treatment, obligations to ensure women’s full development, their participation in political and public life, and their enjoyment of specific socioeconomic rights.54 Article 5 (a) of the Convention stipulates that States must adopt specific measures to combat harmful gender stereotypes. 31. During the Working Group’s consultations, participants – several of them women and girls living or having grown up in poverty themselves – described the stigma and intersecting discrimination experienced by women and girls in poverty. Women and girls from ethnic minority groups, such as Roma and Indigenous women, women and girls with disabilities, girls and young women in poverty, illiterate women and girls, women and girls of African descent, internally displaced, migrant (especially undocumented), stateless, asylum-seeking and refugee women, women living in situations of conflict and occupation, rural women, older women, self-employed women, women domestic workers, and women waste pickers and street vendors, described the distinct ways in which poverty and inequalities shaped their lives. Many participants powerfully attested to the stress occasioned by the need to provide an adequate standard of living for their families, with limited resources, along with feelings of guilt due to having to leave their children to work long hours in poorly paid, informal and precarious employment.55 It was also emphasized that social welfare paradigms that targeted families living in poverty, often directed at Indigenous and minority groups, such as Roma families, for placement of their children into care or non-consensual adoptions were discriminatory and violated the human rights to family protection and assistance. 56 32. In many jurisdictions, criminal laws are disproportionately applied to women and girls because of their economic or social status, and due to the costs of accessing the formal justice system. Those particularly affected are women and girls living in poverty seeking reproductive health care and services, including abortion, Indigenous, migrant and ethnic minority women and girls, women and girls who are experiencing homelessness, women and girl street vendors, sex workers, those who use drugs or are associated with trade in drugs, women in the informal economy, informal and cross-border traders, women and girls environmental and human rights defenders, and members of LGBTIQ+ communities. 57 33. The security of tenure of land or housing and the accessibility of legal and justice systems are also severely limited for women and girls living in poverty, who frequently have no effective means to assert their rights to be free from violence, to contest or to receive compensation for illegal or unfair evictions, displacement due to development projects, land grabbing and environmental destruction, or to access or claim adequate housing, decent working conditions or social security entitlements.58 Poverty and inequality: violations of women’s economic, social and cultural rights 34. Economic, social and cultural rights are recognized in numerous international, regional and national human rights instruments. The right to an adequate standard of living, as guaranteed in article 25 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, article 27 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and article 14 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, constitutes a key entitlement through which the rights of women and girls to live in dignity may be guaranteed. In its general comment No. 12 (1999), the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights noted that an “adequate” standard of living was “to a large extent determined by prevailing social, economic, cultural, climatic, ecological and other conditions”, and this cannot be reduced to a simple, universal monetary threshold. The right to an adequate standard of living encompasses food and nutrition, housing, electricity, water and sanitation. The right to rest and leisure protected in 54 55 56 57 58 10 Arts. 1, 3, 4, 7, 8 and 11–14. Submission from ATD Fourth World. Submission from End Child Poverty Coalition and Youth Voices. Submissions from Penal Reform International and ATD Fourth World; and fortifyrights.org. Ibid. GE.23-06173