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	Civil Society agencies renew call for Action to Protect Civilians by Action Against Hunger, CARE, ChildFund Alliance   In the more than 20 years of consideration and prioritization of the protection of civilians in armed conflict by the UN Security Council, progress has been made in building an international normative civilian protection framework.   However, compliance with the laws and norms that safeguard civilians has deteriorated along with the safety and security of civilians caught in armed conflict.   Conflicts of today continue to have devastating impacts on civilians, critical civilian infrastructure, protection, livelihoods, education, health systems, and food and water security, particularly when explosive weapons are used in populated areas.   As the world faces the unprecedented challenge of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, those living in conflict-affected countries are among the most vulnerable and at risk from the devastating consequences of the disease.   They live in countries such as Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, with weakened or decimated health infrastructure, where those working to help them are targets of attack and where humanitarian access is challenging.   Constraints placed on peacekeeping operations, severe restrictions on rights and freedoms, and devastating socio-economic impacts may contribute to political destabilization, exacerbate existing armed conflicts, or lead to the emergence of new protection risks for civilians. There is a limited window of opportunity to effectively respond to this crisis and demonstrate global solidarity.   Now more than ever the UN Security Council, Member States, and the UN System must take urgent, bold and practical steps to respond to the challenges that remain to the protection of civilians in armed conflict.   We call on UN Member States to consider and support the following four key recommendations in advance of the coming UN Security Council Open Debate on the protection of civilians:   1. Reaffirm your commitment to the protection of civilians and to promoting and implementing international humanitarian law and other applicable legal and policy frameworks and call on parties to armed conflict to do the same.   Call to end impunity, notably by holding perpetrators to account, especially on every deliberate attack on healthcare and education facilities, and support international independent investigative and prosecution mechanisms.   The greatest advance in protection of civilians can and should come from parties to conflict upholding their obligations under international humanitarian law and other applicable frameworks;   2. Demonstrate leadership by articulating the practical steps and financial decisions taken to promote protection of civilians. Make bold, forward-looking political and financial commitments to translate laws and norms that safeguard civilians in conflict zones into practice.   Accord peacekeeping operations with protection of civilians mandates, adequate financial resources and staffing to carry out protection tasks, including senior protection advisors, uniformed and civilian gender advisors, women protection advisors, child protection advisors, and community liaison assistants and language assistants.   Prioritize investment in and support to women-led organizations given the disproportionate impact of conflict on women and girls and the dearth of women in leadership roles.   Support the development of an international political declaration to strengthen the protection of civilians from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.   Harm to civilians can be prevented if countries and armed actors take concrete steps to prioritize protection. The UN Secretary-General has called for action at the national level, including: first, by developing national policy frameworks on the protection of civilians; second, by maintaining a principled and sustained engagement with humanitarian organizations and non-state armed groups to negotiate safe and timely humanitarian access and to promote compliance; and third, by ensuring accountability for violations.   These recommendations remain as relevant and urgent as ever. Moreover, the Declaration of Shared Commitments on UN Peacekeeping Operations includes a number of commitments that, if implemented, can help peacekeeping operations better protect civilians.   Finally, the call for action made by 22 civil society organizations last year ahead of the Open Debate on protection of civilians provides a comprehensive set of practical recommendations to improve implementation and better protect civilians.   A roadmap is available. It is now up to the Member States, the UN, and civil society to take action and lead the way translating the laws and norms safeguarding civilians into practice;   3. Commit to a robust and sustained dialogue with civil society on the protection of civilians beyond the yearly debate. Greater outreach to women and girls in conflict-affected areas is needed to encourage and enable their full, equal and meaningful participation in decisions that will impact their lives and communities.   Sustained political will and continuous discussion on good practices and remaining challenges is needed to move the agenda forward, particularly in country-specific contexts.   Civil society organizations are key to helping civilians protect themselves, including through unarmed approaches. Civil society organizations are also essential to the systematic collection of information and data regarding threats to civilians and civilian harm incidents, including grave violations against children, enabling more efficient and effective solutions to the protection of civilians in conflict.   Civil society organizations work at global, national and local levels with communities affected by conflict and are uniquely positioned to connect stakeholders across all levels. It is critical that the voices of those they serve, including women, girls and boys, persons with disabilities, the displaced, and those most marginalized, are elevated and heard at the global level, particularly during these trying times.   4. Support all efforts by the UN Secretary-General and the UN System to prevent, respond to and mitigate the impact of COVID-19 particularly in countries experiencing armed conflict, including the Secretary-General's call for global ceasefire.   The threat posed by the global coronavirus pandemic to countries ravaged by armed conflict, and its disproportionate impact on women, girls and boys, calls for immediate and resolute action by the international community, especially by parties to armed conflict. Conflict-affected nations will be severely impeded in preparing and responding to COVID- 19 if fighting continues.   In the short term, the biggest loss of life may come from an erosion of humanitarian access and continuity of programming. It is therefore critical that states and all parties to conflict use this opportunity to reaffirm the core humanitarian principles and recommit to facilitating safe and timely access to humanitarian assistance and protection to affected civilians.   This includes removing restrictions on movement for health and humanitarian workers, barriers for humanitarian supply chains, disproportionate responses by security forces, unreasonable bureaucratic impediments, and counter- terrorism provisions that unduly hinder the provision of principled humanitarian assistance.   It also includes ensuring that a robust gender analysis underpins all aspects of COVID-19 responses, so that instead of exacerbating harmful social norms or exposing women and girls to even higher levels of gender-based violence, we use the pandemic as an opportunity to rebuild more equal, inclusive and resilient communities.   Moving forward, governments must also ensure that security forces exercise restraint in the enforcement of COVID-19 related measures and adhere to domestic and international law so as to not exacerbate the suffering of civilians.   http://reliefweb.int/report/world/civil-society-call-action-protect-civilians   * Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict: Report of the UN Secretary-General; May 2020: http://bit.ly/36yUEne   March 2016   International humanitarian law is unravelling before our eyes, by Jan Egeland, Stephen O'Brien.   In 1945, when world leaders boldly committed to save future generations from the scourge of war, their pledge led to the foundation of the United Nations and to modern international humanitarian law.   The turmoil that ensued was a far cry from the picture of peace and diplomacy they had in mind. In the decades that followed, civilians experienced devastation caused by conflicts that played out completely differently to the two world wars, marked by proxy conflicts and fierce battles of ideology fought in the name of religion or regime change.   But the consequences of these conflicts were all too familiar: civilians injured or killed; children and women raped and abused; towns and cities razed to the ground; and whole communities forced from their homes, bringing mass displacement up to post-world war two records, at well over 60 million people.   Today's civil wars involve a greater number of factions making them even more complex to bring to resolution. They are characterised by shocking levels of brutality meted out on civilians and an all-pervasive impunity for perpetrators. People in besieged areas are deliberately starved, intimidated and deprived of essential goods sometimes for years at a time,, with impunity.   Homes, schools, hospitals and places of worship are bombed at alarming levels often with patients, staff, families, worshippers and students still inside.   Many of today's conflicts lack a clear frontline and are more likely to take place in densely populated urban settings with civilians in the crossfire. When populated urban areas are attacked with explosive weapons, 90% of the people killed or injured are civilians.   We stand at a critical juncture: 150 years of achievement in signing up to international laws and agreeing to international norms to protect civilians in conflict zones, are unravelling before our eyes.   To reset the international system to better meet the needs of the millions of people whose lives are torn apart by violence, three areas at the core of the humanitarian enterprise must urgently be addressed - access, principles and protection.   In May, states will gather for a humanitarian summit, where they will have a unique chance to commit to concrete changes in each of these areas.   First, access. All over the world and at a staggering scale in Syria, warring parties deny or obstruct access to aid organisations trying to reach communities in need. This barring of access may be blatant: attacking and killing aid workers, looting their supplies, outright denying safe passage, or it may be more subtle, coming in the form of burdensome bureaucratic measures.   Siege is a barbaric tactic of war that has no place in the 21st century. Harrowing images of starving children in Syria's besieged town of Madaya at the beginning of this year have shaken us all, but all over the world there are hundreds of Madayas: in Sudan, in Yemen, in Myanmar, in Nigeria people are barred from accessing assistance while aid workers engage in difficult, dangerous and complex access negotiations with warring parties, sometimes with success, often with none.   Secondly, at the summit, leaders must come prepared to renew their commitments to the core humanitarian principles - humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence - that guide our work.   Preserving our neutrality and our refusal to take sides in conflict, as well as our independence from political agendas, are essential to achieving our mission to protect and provide assistance to affected populations based on needs alone.   Abiding by these principles allows us to build acceptance with fighting parties and communities and to reach the frontlines of crisis. The politicisation of aid leads to suspicion of our mission, undermining our work and putting in danger the lives of our staff and the people we are supposed to protect and assist.   Third, protection is at the cornerstone of humanitarian action. Over the past 150 years, and in the past two decades in particular, we have put unstinting efforts into strengthening international legal frameworks governing the rules of war.   Yet we are witnessing a brazen and brutal lack of respect for these rules. Warring parties must abide by the rules of distinction, proportionality and precaution.   We can no longer stand by as families are deliberately and indiscriminately bombed in their homes, while the bombers go unpunished.   It is heart-rending to provide food and water to families only for them to risk being shot as they come to get aid, or if humanitarian workers are targeted.   It is hopeless to build hospitals if we cannot guarantee the safety of patients and healthcare staff.   Counter-terrorism and asymmetric warfare do not justify the loosening or dismissal of the rules that aim to protect civilians in conflict. Enough is enough. Even wars have rules.   In his report One Humanity, Shared Responsibility and his agenda for humanity, the UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon calls for global leadership to prevent and end conflicts, and on global leaders to uphold the norms that safeguard humanity. Governments must commit to setting up of a watchdog to track, collect data and report on violations of international humanitarian law.   He also calls for greater support for national justice systems and international judicial bodies, such as the international criminal court, to bring an end to impunity. We look forward to commitments on each of these and many other initiatives at the world humanitarian summit.   The vision set in the UN charter after world war two remains relevant, but global leaders must now reinforce the foundations that make up the humanitarian system. The world humanitarian summit needs to be a turning point in how states, international organisations, the private sector, civil society and individual leaders, come together to confront the major challenges of our time.   Leaders have shown what they are capable of when they commit to change. Last year in Paris on climate change, in New York on the 2030 sustainable development agenda, in Sendai on risk reduction, leaders demonstrated the power of political leadership to make progress on some of the most difficult issues all of us, across the world, are facing.   We must harness the requisite political will to ensure the necessary protections of civilians and access to humanitarian assistance for the generations that succeed us.   * Jan Egeland is secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council and a former UN emergency relief coordinator. Stephen O'Brien is UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator   http://www.unocha.org/ http://www.nrc.no/   Jan. 2016   ICRC speech at the United Nations on protection of civilians, by Christine Beerli, vice-president of the ICRC.   The International Committee of the Red Cross has called for greater protection of civilians in armed conflicts around the world, including in Syria where hundreds of thousands are starving. Christine Beerli, vice-president of the ICRC made the call at the United Nations Security Council.   Thank you for inviting the ICRC to address you on the subject of the protection of civilians - a subject which your Council has put at the centre of many of its resolutions, including on Syria, South Sudan, Yemen, Iraq, the Central African Republic and the Lake Chad basin.   In 2015, ICRC operations reached more than 40 million people, including more civilians than ever before in our history. Regrettably, we see the underlying trend of increasing humanitarian needs as likely to continue over the next year.   International humanitarian law (IHL) for the protection of civilians in international and non-international armed conflict is clearly established and binding for all parties to armed conflict, State and non-State.   The ICRC continues to believe that the current legal framework for the protection of civilians remains relevant and that the main challenge in protecting civilians centres on greater compliance with IHL by all parties to armed conflicts.   For the ICRC, working on the ground with the victims of armed conflict, it is obvious that political action ultimately determines the fate of civilian populations.   If there are no political solutions to armed conflicts, then many millions of people will continue to endure the personal tragedy and humanitarian consequences of armed conflict, for years, decades, or even lifetimes.   This year we will mark the fifth anniversary of the Syrian crisis. Syria has in many ways become an emblematic conflict, with immense suffering of the civilian population.   It is emblematic in terms of violations of the law, of a restrictive interpretation of the humanitarian space, of illegal use of weapons and of use of illegal weapons, all of which has led to dramatic displacement, in turn putting pressure on neighbouring States basic services and social fabric.   The link between the suffering and the lack of respect for IHL could not be clearer than when you talk to the severely malnourished people of Madaya, Foua and Kefraya, as my colleagues did over the last weeks.   Women, men and children have died, and, unless full compliance with IHL is assured, many more are at risk of death. Today the overwhelming humanitarian needs necessitate that the sieges be lifted immediately.   This Council has the possibility to support and practice confidential engagement for the respect of the law, in Syria and elsewhere. On behalf of the civilians that the ICRC serves in armed conflicts around the world, I encourage you to do so.   All this suggests that much more needs to be done to resolve armed conflicts. Here, the emphasis of last year's UN High Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations on "the primacy of politics" and the need for political solutions to be in the driving seat of UN efforts is important, and timely.   The ICRC welcomes the Panel's recognition that "the protection of civilians is a core obligation of the United Nations".   We also recognize that the single greatest contribution to ending the suffering of civilians in armed conflict is always the effective prevention and resolution of armed conflict.   With this in mind, the ICRC urges the Council to find consensus, wherever it can, to build the necessary political strategies that will prevent and end armed conflicts.   Where there is no end to an armed conflict and when IHL applies, then compliance with international humanitarian law is critical to ensure the protection of civilians.   The conduct of hostilities - the way armed conflicts are fought - is the key determinant of civilian suffering.   The misuse of weapons, direct attacks against civilians and the civilian populations as well as indiscriminate attacks, starvation and displacement that become part of a military strategy and attacks against health care facilities all too often combine to create civilian suffering that involves serious violations of IHL.   In the ICRC's experience, much widespread harm and suffering caused by armed conflict is wrongly seen as an inevitable consequence of war when in fact it is frequently a violation of law.   Far too much civilian suffering in this last year has resulted from a failure of the parties to a conflict to take into account the protection of civilians in the conduct of military operations and to strike the appropriate balance between military necessity and humanitarian imperatives, as required by IHL.   Yet violations of IHL occur daily: explosive weapons are used indiscriminately in populated areas. Civilian populations and civilian objects are deliberately targeted. Civilian communities are forcibly displaced and trapped in lengthy sieges, deprived of means of survival.   Women and men, girls and boys are regularly the victims of rape and sexual violence. Schools are attacked or used for military purposes, leading to their loss of protection against attack.   Detainees are summarily executed, tortured and kept in inhumane conditions and denied due process of law.   Such violations of IHL are well known to you all and often referred to explicitly in the Council's resolutions with an evident determination to end them.   The use of explosive weapons in populated areas is one example that raises serious concern in terms of compliance. Especially in urban environments these weapons are prone to indiscriminate effects, with often devastating consequences for civilians. Many civilians are killed or injured by such weapons.   Critical infrastructure - on which civilians depend for their livelihoods and survival - like power stations, water treatment plants and hospitals can be continuously and cumulatively damaged so that they cease to provide essential services to meet people's basic needs.   Precisely for those reasons, the ICRC has urged that the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area should be avoided in densely populated areas.   To address this humanitarian issue States should make known their policies on the use of such weapons and explain how their use of explosive weapons in populated areas complies with IHL.   We also ask that Habitat III, the upcoming United Nations Summit to develop a "new urban agenda", take account of the risks faced by many millions of people threatened by armed conflict and other situations of violence in today's densely populated and fast growing cities.   The second main aspect of compliance that the ICRC would like to emphasize is the need for States and non-State armed groups to comply with their obligation to meet the basic needs of the population under their control and, if unable to do so, to allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded passage of relief for civilians in need, subject to their right of control.   If these basic needs are not met, parties to armed conflict shall positively respond to offers of services made by impartial humanitarian organization such as the ICRC and shall authorize their humanitarian activities, which include protection and assistance.   Humanitarian activities are all those aimed at preserving life and security or seeking to restore the mental and physical well-being of victims of armed conflict. In this process, a concern to protect the dignity of a person is fundamental.   Questions of humanitarian access necessary to carry out protection and assistance activities, is an aspect of IHL on which the Council has continued to exercise significant concern in 2015.   These questions will be particularly relevant in 2016 as States prepare to make new commitments on humanitarian action at the World Humanitarian Summit in May.   At the Summit, the ICRC very much wants to see a significant and practical recommitment by States to their obligations to protect and assist the civilian population in armed conflicts.   Clear recognition of the complementary albeit essential and lawful role that impartial humanitarian organizations - local and international - can play in meeting this humanitarian objective also needs to emerge from the Summit.   Practical recommitments to IHL's rules on access, protection and assistance will be particularly important in 2016 because of the unprecedented number of internally displaced people, refugees and vulnerable migrants that are fleeing and moving because of the humanitarian consequences of armed conflict.   The ICRC asks that a strong focus of the Council's attention remain on the millions of IDPs affected by armed conflict, many of whom die as a result of armed conflict.   The need to respect and ensure compliance with IHL is urgent. States and non-State armed groups must comply with these laws, and close the existing implementation gap.   The mere existence of obligations and prohibitions is not sufficient to prevent and put a stop to suffering, or to deter future violations. IHL rules must be known, understood and implemented by the parties to an armed conflict if its purposes are to be fulfilled.   This is a multifaceted process which requires that appropriate action be taken by actors at the national, regional, and international levels.   I hope you have heard us encourage the Council's efforts to protect civilians, and urge all States to find whatever consensus is possible to prevent and resolve armed conflicts as the single best way to protect civilians.   Meanwhile, and as armed conflicts go on, respecting the law is the single most impactful choice States and non-State groups can make to avoid civilian suffering.   http://www.icrc.org/en/what-we-do/protecting-civilians http://www.icrc.org/en/document/conflict-disaster-crisis-UN-red-cross-issue-warning http://www.icrc.org/en/document/international-humanitarian-law-and-challenges-contemporary-armed-conflicts http://www.icrc.org/en/what-we-do/building-respect-ihl http://www.icrc.org/en/war-and-law/ihl-other-legal-regmies/ihl-human-rights http://www.icrc.org/en/war-and-law/contemporary-challenges-for-ihl/respect-ihl http://www.icrc.org/en/document/no-agreement-states-mechanism-strengthen-compliance-rules-war http://www.icrc.org/en/document/what-should-we-do-when-world-burning-start-restoring-laws-war http://www.icrc.org/en/war-and-law http://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy   http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/un-documents/protection-of-civilians/ http://www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/adviser/ http://guide-humanitarian-law.org/content/index/ http://www.unocha.org/what-we-do/policy/thematic-areas/protection http://www.refworld.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rwmain?page=civilians http://www.unric.org/en/unric-library/26575 http://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/ http://www.unicef.org/protection/57929_58022.html http://www.protectingeducation.org/ http://healthcareindanger.org/ http://www.globalprotectioncluster.org/en/tools-and-guidance/essential-protection-guidance-and-tools/protection-of-civilians-essential-guidance-and-tools.html http://www.humanitarianresponse.info/en/coordination/clusters/global Visit the related web page
	Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic must not discount women and girls by UN Working Group on discrimination against women   As governments attempt to tackle the unprecedented public health and economic crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we are deeply concerned that women and girls are suffering even more egregious violations of their human rights.   In the absence of gender sensitive intersectional responses, different forms of systemic discrimination already faced by women and girls will be exacerbated.   The dramatic increase in women’s caregiving responsibilities, the rise in what was already an epidemic of sexual and domestic violence, the continued feminization of poverty, the proliferation of barriers to healthcare, especially pregnancy-related healthcare, will profoundly jeopardize women’s safety and well-being, economic security, and participation in political and public life, both during and after the pandemic.   The measures taken by governments to mitigate the risks to health and life posed by COVID-19 must take into account the specific attributes and circumstances faced by women and girls.   These include, but are not limited to their sex, gender, age, disability, ethnic origin, and immigration or residence status.   States must refrain from any action that will exacerbate the already disproportionate economic and social impact of this pandemic on women and girls.   Women are currently at the frontlines, providing essential medical and other services and keeping communities running while lockdowns are enforced.   As a result, they face a tremendous increase in their working hours, and are at greater risk of being directly exposed to COVID-19.   There are reports of nurses, doctors, midwives, and hospital cleaners contracting the virus while on duty, due to the lack of adequate provision of personal protective equipment.   In some countries health workers have been dismissed from their jobs or arrested for complaining about the inadequate means of protection. Others have been evicted by landlords for fear of contagion.   Restrictions on the provision of health services essential to women and girls, such as pre and post-natal care, termination of pregnancy and the availability of contraceptives, imposed in many countries to address the excessive demands on health services caused by the pandemic, also affects women and girls’ health disproportionately.   In some countries, the human rights of women are being violated during and after pregnancy and childbirth in an attempt to allegedly expedite the process or prevent contagion (e.g. cesarean sections and forceps delivery performed without medical indication, denial of epidural, prohibition of partner’s presence, and separation of newborns from mothers).   Some governments are creating new barriers to access to abortion services, by deeming it a non-essential medical procedure. Elderly women are also discriminated in their access to health care, in particular with respect to the allocation of scarce medical resources such as ventilators in intensive care units.   Moreover, women and girls are at greater risk of domestic violence including sexual abuse without any recourse during the pandemic. Home isolation makes them more vulnerable to abuse by partners and family members, while their access to counseling and other emergency services, including alternative housing and legal assistance as well as access to courts has been drastically reduced.   In some countries domestic violence reports have almost tripled, while there are no shelters or shelters do not have sufficient capacity for all victims who need protection and many shelters are no longer accessible due to the lockdowns. Femicides by intimate partners are being reported with alarming frequency.   Women with disabilities in institutions, nursing homes, and psychiatric and other facilities as well as older women in residential care homes are also at heightened risk of violence due to the lack of external oversight.   Women’s already disproportionate share of care responsibilities has become particularly onerous during the COVID-19 crisis, with risks of serious consequences on their physical and mental health.   The cultural construction of gender has imposed certain roles to women and girls within the family such as caring for children and other dependent family members as well as providing for basic needs of family life such as domestic work, food, hygiene and education for children.   The burden is now heavier on them to fulfill this role due to a significant increase in the care needs of children, elderly and the sick, as well as the threat of food insecurity.   This is even more burdensome for women working in essential services and women single heads of household. Despite the increased burden, their unpaid care work continues to be undervalued and unrecognized, without any means to ensure its fair distribution or alleviation through the expansion of social protection.   Women are represented disproportionately in precarious, informal and poorly paid work, including domestic work. Owing to the lack of adequate social protection packages, they are at a higher risk of harm from the social and economic shocks linked to measures that are being introduced to curb the pandemic.   Loss of income has direct consequences for women’s ability to afford housing, food and water for themselves and their household. The digital divide among women and men also places women in a disadvantaged position, affecting their ability to work or study from home, and to provide home schooling for their children.   Many women and girls face multiple and intersectional forms of discrimination, and are at risk of being further marginalized including, but not limited to, women and girls from minorities, indigenous, migrant and rural communities, older women, and women and girls with disabilities, who are particularly negatively affected by the crisis.   For example, indigenous women lack information in their language on prevention strategies and on how and where to get health services. Rural and poor women who lack access to clean water at home face an increased burden in collecting water in crowded public spaces to cover their basic needs. This is linked to a higher risk of exposure to the virus.   Due to emergency measures, many women and girls with disabilities have experienced the disruption of support networks essential for their survival and are in dire situations, and lack access to accessible and inclusive information, including in sign language, Easy Read and Braille formats.   Older women are subjected to ageism and stereotyping, have limited access to information on how to protect themselves, and are excluded from economic recovery programmes.   Despite the disproportionate negative effects of the crisis on women, as well as their presence in frontline roles and their critical role in keeping communities running, they are largely absent from local, national and global COVID-19 response teams, policy spaces and decision-making.   However, in few countries, women are leading national responses that have recorded better outcomes and progress in curbing the virus.   At this critical time, States must ensure that policy decisions are taken with equal and meaningful participation of women from diverse groups and take into account the gendered risks and realities which are exacerbated by other circumstances such as, poverty, location in a rural area or “food desert”, and identities such as ethnic origin, disability, and age as well as pre-existing structural deficits.   A key benchmark of any new policy must be that it does not deepen existing structural inequalities, or create new vulnerabilities, but rather ameliorates and creates new opportunities that are just and equitable.   We note that some States have been taking specific measures towards limiting the gendered impact of the pandemic such as: putting in place creative arrangements to support women victims of gender based violence, for example hotlines, online services, or reception of alerts at food stores; including shelters for women survivors in the list of essential services; authorizing the use of telemedicine for reproductive health care at home; providing economic support for domestic workers and low income earners who have stopped working; providing extended paid leave for any parent to take care of children or persons with disabilities who stay at home; providing free childcare; or providing temporary housing and food for poor women.   However, further measures are needed. We call on States to take a gender sensitive intersectional approach in their responses to COVID-19 and implement the following measures:   Make testing universal and free and follow-up with containment strategies that do not put women and girls at greater risk of violence and abuse.   Ensure access to treatment without discrimination on any ground for all who test positive, regardless of insurance coverage, and provide paid sick leave for workers in the formal and informal sectors, to ensure the effectiveness of containment strategies without creating specific harms for women.   Provide functional personal protection equipment for all women working at the frontlines in essential services.   Ensure continued and safe access to support services, emergency measures including legal assistance and access to judicial remedies for women and girls at risk of or who are subjected to domestic and sexual violence, harassment and abuse.   Significantly overhaul and expand social protection systems to take into account women’s specific needs and vulnerabilities including, but not limited to, paid sick leave, increased support for child and elderly care, housing and food subsidies.   Provide universal health care for all women and girls, including uninterrupted access to a full range of sexual and reproductive health services. This also requires ensuring that there is no disruption in the supply chain of sexual and reproductive health commodities, including prioritizing their continued production, shipping and distribution.   Recognise women as heads of family on an equal basis with men so that they may enjoy the same financial or social benefits, such as cash transfers.   Specific attention should be paid to women and girls from marginalized groups and their specific needs in terms of accessibility and adequacy of information about the pandemic, the ability to maintain social distance, and access to testing and treatment as well as other necessities including food, housing, sanitation and essential support services.   Ensure that medical decisions concerning elderly women are based on medical need, ethical criteria and on the best available scientific evidence, not primarily on age.   Provide protection against discrimination and abuse of domestic workers, many of whom are migrant workers, including income support and measures to limit their risk of exposure in the workplace, as well as timely access to testing and treatment.   Systematically gather disaggregated outbreak-related data, to examine and report on the gender-specific health effects of COVID-19, both direct and indirect as well as on the gender-specific human rights impacts of COVID-19 and utilize this data in the formulation of responses.   In addition to the specific, short time measures, the crisis is an opportunity to address structural inequalities and deficits that have consistently held women back, and to re-imagine and transform systems and societies.   In order to fully comprehend the gendered impact of the crisis, it is crucial to understand the structural discrimination underlying this emergency which is not only causing but exacerbating serious violations of women and girls’ human rights.   Feminists globally are uniting across movements and borders to shape a collective and inclusive response to these unprecedented circumstances.   Notwithstanding the constriction of spaces for advocacy and engagement with governments due to the lockdowns, we strongly recommend that their voices be heard and their leadership recognized so that the solutions they recommend can be implemented.   http://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/wg-women-and-girls http://www.passblue.com/2021/08/31/how-infant-formula-makers-feed-off-fears-of-covid/ Visit the related web page
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