Strengthening National and International Rapid Response to the Impact of the Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19) on Women and Girls

A/RES/75/156View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 28 Advancement of women, published in 2020.

What subjects does this mandate have?

4 subjects

What’s in this document?

23 operative paragraphs

Pledges to take further concrete action to ensure the full, effective and accelerated implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development during the response to the pandemic, with a view to achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, and the full and equal enjoyment of all their human rights and fundamental freedoms;

Emphasizes the need for full respect for and the protection and fulfilment of human rights, and stresses that there is no place for any form of stigmatization, discrimination, racism and xenophobia in response to the pandemic;

Acknowledges the measures, policies and strategies put in place by Member States to address and mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 at the national level, stresses that these measures should be in accordance with the obligations of Member States under international human rights law, and urges Member States to mainstream a gender perspective on a system-wide basis when designing, implementing and monitoring such measures, policies and strategies, in meaningful consultation with and with the full, equal and meaningful participation of women and, where appropriate, girls and taking into account their specific needs;

Takes note of various appeals made by the Secretary-General to address COVID-19 and its impacts, in particular his appeal for peace at home and in homes around the world, as well as the efforts of the United Nations system in developing policy guidelines that are responsive to the specific needs of women and girls during the pandemic;

Encourages Member States to take the necessary measures to implement people-centred, gender-sensitive, with full respect for human rights, context-specific, whole-of-government and whole-of-society, and prevention-oriented responses when designing their health preparedness and response plans for COVID-19, outlining both immediate and long-term actions, taking into account the direct and indirect impacts on women and girls’ health and their specific needs, including by:

Ensuring the accessibility and availability of quality health care, including ongoing access to essential, safe, affordable, effective and quality medicines for all, without discrimination of any kind, with particular attention to patients with chronic diseases, older women, victims of violence, antenatal and postnatal care and delivery services, including emergency obstetric and newborn care, putting in place necessary infection control measures and maintaining HIV/AIDS voluntary and confidential testing, counselling and treatment access with no interruptions, particularly, but not exclusively, in terms of prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS, and recognizing, in this regard, the role of extensive immunization against COVID-19 as a global public good for health in preventing, containing and stopping transmission in order to bring the pandemic to an end, once safe, quality, efficacious, effective, accessible and affordable vaccines are available;

Ensuring a sufficient supply of hygiene kits and necessary medical supplies, voluntary and informed family planning methods for women and sanitary pads for all women and girls, as well as the provision of care through innovative strategies such as mobile clinics;

Ensuring that verified and scientific COVID-19 public health messages, including targeted prevention and precautionary measures to be taken at the individual and community levels, are developed and disseminated, as appropriate, in accessible formats and through multiple media platforms to ensure that these messages are widely available to all women and girls, including women and girls with disabilities, pregnant women, older women, women living with HIV/AIDS, internally displaced, refugee and migrant women and girls, as well as indigenous women and women living in remote and rural communities;

Taking appropriate measures to address the specific physical, mental and psychological health needs of and psychosocial support for female front-line health workers and to create a safe, enabling and violence-free working environment for them; providing appropriate personal protective equipment, including essential hygiene and sanitation items, and access to safe and affordable water, particularly for those female health workers quarantined; addressing the gender pay gap, where it exists, in the health sector; and ensuring their full, effective and meaningful participation in decision-making and response planning;

Developing, as appropriate, psychological services as well as other community-based solutions, including making use of digital spaces, for the provision of mental health and psychosocial support for women and girls;

Engaging all relevant stakeholders, including civil society, women’s organizations, youth-led organizations, the private sector and academia, through, inter alia, participatory and transparent multi-stakeholder platforms and partnerships, to provide input to the development, implementation and evaluation of policies responsive to COVID-19, in order to take into account the specific needs of women and girls;

Urges Member States to allocate resources to the continuation of universal access to health-care services, including sexual and reproductive health-care services, such as family planning and maternal health care for women to prevent high levels of maternal mortality and morbidity, as well as the exposure of pregnant women to the virus in health facilities, including while accessing antenatal care and delivery;

Encourages Member States to introduce, adjust or expand, as necessary, national social protection programmes and adapt targeting methodologies, as appropriate, to ensure access to social protection and assistance programmes that would support those affected by COVID-19, especially women, by expanding the reach and benefit levels of social assistance programmes, including to those working in the informal sector, such as cash transfers and social pensions, as well as other programmes that can be implemented with low transaction cost, and to ensure that the information on the availability of and ways to access these social protection and assistance programmes is widely available and accessible to all women and girls, especially those who are vulnerable or in vulnerable situations;

Calls upon Member States to uphold children’s right to education, and in that regard urges them to ensure girls’ access to quality education by implementing appropriate measures, including, when relevant, by supporting families to allow their children, in particular girls, to return to school in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic and promote continuous education throughout the pandemic;

Encourages Member States to ensure access to infrastructure and public services, including access to safe and affordable water and sanitation, as well as menstrual hygiene management for all women and girls, and safe and affordable transportation, inter alia during humanitarian emergencies, including in rural areas and informal settlements, settlements for internally displaced persons, refugee camps, as well as migrant shelters;

Recognizes that older women, women and girls with disabilities and those with underlying medical conditions require special attention because of their higher risk of experiencing severe symptoms of COVID-19, and in this regard encourages Member States to develop the necessary measures to support them as well as help household caregivers, including by ensuring access to and continuity of essential care for older persons and persons with disabilities, while ensuring that older persons and persons with disabilities are treated with respect and on an equal basis, and to implement more flexible measures for those employees who are caregivers in their household by considering expanding access to paid leave and paid sick leave;

Urges Member States to take effective measures to prevent and respond to the increase of violence against women and girls amid the COVID-19 pandemic by integrating evidence-based prevention, response and protection measures, including by designating and expanding the capacity of domestic violence shelters as essential services and supporting them, as well as increasing resources, in collaboration with civil society on the front line of response, ensuring access to justice for women and girls who are victims of violence and stepping up advocacy and awareness-raising campaigns to address all forms of violence and discrimination against women and girls, particularly during confinement;

Recognizes the importance of strengthening the leadership and full, equal and meaningful participation of women in all decision-making processes in the design and implementation of national response and recovery policies and strategies to address the COVID-19 outbreak, which poses multidimensional threats, and for which the promotion of people’s engagement and inclusiveness, particularly of women, families and communities, is fundamental for a more effective, immediate and rapid response;

Calls upon Member States to ensure that all relevant policies and procedures are responsive to the specific needs of women and girls in the light of the efforts made to reduce the impact of COVID-19, document the efforts of government on women across policies to protect them and their family members from COVID-19, and implement all those policies with necessary supporting programmes and initiatives;

Encourages States to collect quality, timely and reliable data disaggregated by age, sex, disability and other characteristics relevant in national contexts relating to the impact of COVID-19 and response and recovery efforts to ensure that targeted policies and programmes to address challenges faced by women and girls are adequately identified and addressed;

Urges intensified international cooperation, including North-South, South-South and triangular cooperation, bearing in mind that South-South cooperation is not a substitute for, but rather a complement to, North-South cooperation, as well as public-private partnerships to contain, mitigate and defeat the pandemic, including by exchanging information, scientific knowledge and best practices, and to ensure that these efforts are gender-responsive in order to ensure that women and girls are not disproportionately affected or left behind in response efforts;

Calls upon relevant entities of the United Nations system to assist Member States, upon their request, in designing and implementing gender-sensitive national plans and strategies, in order to respond to and recover from the pandemic;

Requests the Secretary-General to take the steps necessary to effectively coordinate and follow up on the implementation of the present resolution and, in this regard, to consider briefing the General Assembly on its implementation, as appropriate.

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What’s in this document?

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