Addressing the Situation of Widows

A/RES/76/252View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 29a Advancement of women, published in 2022.

What subjects does this mandate have?

5 subjects

Anti-Discrimination Measures Gender Discrimination Widowhood Women's Rights Women's Status

What’s in this document?

16 operative paragraphs

Calls upon Member States, the United Nations system and other international and regional organizations, within their respective mandates, to acknowledge the situation of widows and urgently address all forms of discrimination, violence, marginalization, stigmatization and exclusion experienced in certain parts of the world by widows of all ages and to work towards eliminating all forms of discrimination against widows and ending harmful practices;

Calls upon Member States to ensure, and other stakeholders to promote, the leadership and full, equal and meaningful participation of widows, as appropriate, in all decision-making processes, without discrimination of any kind, and in the design, implementation and evaluation of relevant global and national COVID-19 post-recovery policies;

Strongly condemns all forms of discrimination and violence against widows, recognizing that discrimination and violence are an impediment to the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls and to the full realization of all human rights;

Calls upon Member States to take appropriate measures to establish domestic processes for registering and recognizing all marriages, in accordance with domestic legislation and justice systems, while eliminating child, early and forced marriage, and to ensure that widows have full access to inheritance and social protection as well as legal support, quality education and lifelong learning opportunities, and health-care services, including mental health;

Also calls upon Member States to develop, strengthen and implement comprehensive social protection systems that take into account the needs of widows and their children, as well as widowed girls or adult widows who were married as girls, including, where necessary, by listing widows among those who are in vulnerable situations in these systems and by strengthening social services and child protection systems, protection mechanisms, such as safe shelters, access to justice and essential health-care services, nutrition, education and training, targeted cash transfers and other essential goods and services;

Further calls upon Member States to eliminate any barriers, legal inconsistencies and discriminatory policies and laws, where they exist, that impede the rights of all women, including widows, to access to, use of, ownership of and control over land, property and inheritance rights, including diverse types of land tenure, and ensure equal access to justice and legal assistance in this regard, including to protect the rights of widows within inheritance regimes and with regard to the allocation of marital property;

Calls upon Member States to remove all discriminatory laws and policies, where they exist, that prohibit or hinder widows’ access to capital and decent work, and to mainstream a gender perspective in the design and implementation of policies and programmes that promote and protect widows’ economic and financial inclusion and right to decent work, in collaboration with all relevant sectors and stakeholders, including civil society, women’s organizations and academia;

Encourages Member States to implement policies that ensure and leverage women’s economic empowerment by supporting the full and productive participation of women in the labour market, including widows, women with disabilities, women living in poverty and women heads of households, to promote equal pay for equal work or work of equal value and access to childcare services and to promote their meaningful participation in the economy and in decision-making processes at all levels;

Also encourages Member States to incorporate financial instruments, such as bonds and credit lines, aimed at supporting widows in their countries to become economically independent and to work on their own businesses or entrepreneurships, at achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, at promoting control, ownership and management by women, including widows, and at ensuring their participation in all sectors and levels of the economy, including by mobilizing sufficient financial resources, and building capacity and technology transfer as mutually agreed;

Urges Member States to strongly condemn and eliminate all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls, including harmful practices, such as harmful mourning and burial rites, female genital mutilation and child, early and forced marriage, including levirate, recognizing that discrimination and violence are an impediment to the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls and to the full realization of all human rights, and also urges Member States to address the situation of widows of all ages and their children within national policies and action plans, with the goal of eliminating violence against women and of ending harmful practices, to ensure justice and end the impunity of perpetrators of violence against women, including widows and their children, and ensure access to health-care services, including sexual and reproductive health;

Recognizes the important role that families can play in combating social exclusion, gender stereotypes and negative social norms with regard to widows, as well as the role of public and community support to widows who are isolated and without support from their biological or marital families, and highlights the importance of investing in inclusive family-oriented policies and programmes to reduce inequality and promote the well-being of all persons of all ages, as well as to contribute to better outcomes for children and other family members in vulnerable situations and to help to break the intergenerational transfer of poverty;

Encourages Member States to take into account the needs and perspectives of widows of all ages and ensure their full, equal and meaningful participation at all decision-making levels and at all stages of peace processes, peacebuilding and mediation efforts, including in the prevention and resolution of armed conflicts and in post-conflict reconstruction, in accordance with the women and peace and security agenda;

Calls upon Member States to recognize and respond to the need of widows for increased protection in vulnerable situations, including in humanitarian emergencies, and the challenges that arise because of the discrimination, violence, marginalization, stigmatization and exclusion that widows may face, and stresses the need to ensure that their specific needs are identified and addressed in emergency preparedness and response efforts;

Also calls upon Member States to collect and analyse high-quality, timely, reliable and globally comparable data on the status of widows, disaggregated by age, sex, income, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability, geographical location or other characteristics relevant in national contexts, in order to close the existing information gap on widowhood and ensure that future surveys and censuses accurately report on household composition and the relationships of household members and female heads of households and correctly designate widowhood status, and in this regard calls upon Member States to provide support for developing countries for capacity-building on data collection;

Encourages the United Nations system to incorporate the issue of widowhood into its action to support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development¹³ and other relevant global commitments;

¹³Report of the International Conference on Population and Development, Cairo, 5–13 September 1994 (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.95.XIII.18), chap. I, resolution 1, annex.

Requests the Secretary-General, within existing resources, to report to the General Assembly at its seventy-eighth session on the implementation of the present resolution and to take steps to integrate the issue of widows in his relevant reports.

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What’s in this document?

Table of contents