UN experts urge governments to ensure women's right to equality

GENEVA (8 March 2011) – On the International Women's Day centenary, the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Rashida Manjoo, urged States to respect, protect and fulfill women's right to non-discrimination and equality.

"This must be amongst their highest priorities but is too often neglected or subject to inadequate or token efforts," Ms. Manjoo said in a joint statement with other UN independent experts*. "The challenge is to move more decisively from an era of rhetorical engagement to one of implementation and enforcement."

"The human rights of women and girls are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights," the group of experts said, reminding Governments around the world of their obligations to ensure the realization of women's rights.

The experts urged States to ensure that laws, policies, programmes and institutional structures ultimately result in the equal enjoyment by women of their civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

On International Women's Day, they also called for the protection of women and girls against discrimination committed by private actors. "Discrimination that takes place within ostensibly private spaces is not beyond the control and regulation of State institutions."

"While, in many cases, advances have been made in the adoption of standards and the recognition of women's rights," the experts said, "the reality of the lives of so many women shows that implementation of standards and commitment on the ground is still unacceptably weak."

The UN independent experts emphasized that States' obligations remain applicable even during armed conflict or in states of emergency caused by mankind or natural disasters and without discrimination, to all those within their territory or under their jurisdiction, including refugees, asylum seekers, migrant workers, victims of trafficking and stateless persons.

(*) Special Rapporteur on housing, Ms Raquel Rolnik; SR on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions; Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, Mr. Frank La Rue; SR on human rights defenders, Ms. Margaret Sekaggya; SR on the independence of judges and lawyers, Ms. Gabriela Knaul, SR on migrants, Mr. Jorge A. Bustamante; SR on trafficking in persons, Joy Ngozi Ezeilo; SR on Palestinian territories, Mr. Richard Falk; Working Group on people of African descent; Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

UNITED NATIONS Press release