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

Women and their right to adequate housing 2012, para. 41

Paragraph text: Indeed, in its recent concluding observations on Kenya, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women expressed concern over "the situation of women and girls living in urban slums and informal settlements and who are under threat of sexual violence and lack access to adequate to sanitation facilities, which exacerbate their risks of being victims of sexual violence and impact negatively on their health."

Body: Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living

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Paragraph text: States should ensure that housing includes water points and sanitation facilities available for and accessible to women, ensuring women their rights to water and sanitation, as well as to health. States should also ensure that housing is adequately located in order to provide women with access to employment options, health-care services, schools, childcare centres and other social facilities, such that they are non-discriminatory, adequate, available and fully accessible to women and girls.

Body: Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living

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Paragraph text: Water points and sanitation facilities must be made available and accessible to women, ensuring women's rights to water and sanitation, as well as to health. In order to ensure that women's needs are adequately reflected in housing law, policy, and programming, a human rights-based approach requires that women be able to participate in all stages of policy and programme development, so that they are able to give input into the kinds of resources most needed by them within their specific social and cultural context. For example, the recent Inter-Agency Standing Committee guidelines on addressing gender issues in the aftermath of Haiti's earthquake of January 2010 highlighted that "it is essential that water and sanitation actors consult women and girls on the location of sanitation facilities to ensure that the route is safe; that latrines be well lit, lockable from the inside, and offer privacy."

Body: Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living

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