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COVID-19, gender, and disability checklist: Preventing and addressing gender-based violence against women, girls, and gender non-conforming persons with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic

UN WOMEN
WOMEN ENABLED INTERNATIONAL
June 2021

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This checklist is intended to guide a wide range of States, gender-based violence (GBV) support service providers, and other stakeholders, as well as United Nations Country Teams, providing guidance on pandemic response and recovery efforts on how to prevent and respond to GBV against women, girls, and gender non-conforming persons with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic and other emergencies.

It is also a tool to guide recovery efforts from the COVID-19 pandemic and to ensure that rights at the intersection of gender and disability are respected, protected, and fulfilled as part of that recovery.

COVID-19 at the intersection of gender and disability: Findings of a global human rights survey, March to April 2020

McRAE, Amanda
May 2020

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This report is based on the results of a global survey conducted in March and April 2020, targeted at the personal experiences of women, girls, non-binary, trans, and gender non-conforming persons with disabilities and COVID-19. This survey, which was intended to be primarily qualitative, asked respondents to provide narrative information about the following topics: access to health services, including sexual and reproductive health services; rationing of healthcare; personal safety and violence; access to support services to meet daily living needs; and access to education, employment, and other income. The results are based on 100 respondents. Recommendations are given.

Abortion and disability: Towards an intersectional human rights-based approach

WOMEN ENABLED INTERNATIONAL
January 2020

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Ongoing debates around fetal impairment as a legal basis for abortion act as a wedge issue between the disability rights and reproductive rights movements. Disability rights advocates are concerned that laws that expressly permit abortion on grounds of fetal impairment codify the notion that disabled lives are worth less than non-disabled lives. Reproductive rights advocates are concerned that reforming abortion laws to remove fetal impairment grounds—or to expressly ban abortion in the case of a fetal impairment diagnosis—will result in less access to safe abortion and exacerbate the attendant human rights consequences. These tensions are fueled both by advocacy strategies to advance abortion rights that can reinforce harmful disability-related stereotypes and by opponents of abortion rights co-opting disability rights language to impose greater restrictions on abortion access.

Women with disabilities, who live at the intersection of these two movements, care deeply about both protecting reproductive autonomy, including the right to access safe abortion, and dismantling harmful disability-related stigma. Too often, however, their voices are left out of the debate. To remedy this lack of voice and representation in these ongoing debates, Women Enabled International (WEI) conducted a series of consultations with 40 persons with diverse disabilities, who have the biological capacity to become pregnant, and who advocate at the intersection of gender and disability. These consultations provided a safe space in which these advocates from around the globe could discuss specific concerns around this historic tension.

In this framing document, WEI identifies the primary concerns of the women with disabilities who participated in these consultations—as well as the primary concerns of the disability rights and the reproductive rights movements, analyzes the human rights standards that underpin this debate, and applies an intersectional human rights-based approach to posit a way forward.

Women and young persons with disabilities: Guidelines for providing rights-based and gender-responsive services to address gender-based violence and sexual and reproductive health and rights

HOLOBOFF RADFORD, Anastasia
et al
November 2018

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This publications aims to provide practical and concrete guidelines for making Gender-Based Violence (GBV) and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) services more inclusive of and accessible to women and young persons with disabilities and for targeting interventions to meet their disability-specific needs.
 
Critical services for all victims and survivors of GBV include health services (e.g. first-line support, sexual assault examination and care, mental health assessment and care), justice and policing services (e.g. assessment and investigation, perpetrator accountability and reparations, safety and protection, justice sector coordination), social services (e.g. crisis counselling; help lines; legal and rights information, advice, and representation; psychosocial support and counselling), and coordination at both the national and local level.

 

Fundamental SRHR services for women and young persons—with and without disabilities— include comprehensive sexuality education; information, goods, and services for the full range of modern contraceptive methods, including emergency contraception; maternal/newborn healthcare (including antenatal care, skilled attendance at delivery, emergency obstetric care, post-partum care, and newborn care); prevention, diagnosis, and treatment for sexual and reproductive health issues (e.g. sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, syphilis, and HPV, cancers of the reproductive system and breast cancer, and infertility); safe and accessible abortion, where it is not against the law; and post-abortion care to treat complications from unsafe abortion.

 

While the primary audience of these Guidelines is GBV and SRHR service providers and support staff, these Guidelines are also intended as a valuable resource for all stakeholders—including those in government, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations—involved in designing, developing, implementing, or advocating for GBV or SRHR services for women and young persons with disabilities. 

AccountABILITY toolkit: a guide to using UN human rights mechanisms to advance the rights of women and girls with disabilities

PHILLIPS, Suzannah
et al
2017

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This toolkit seeks to empower women with disabilities and organizations working on their behalf to make use of the available U.N. human rights mechanisms to ensure that the human rights violations women with disabilities experience receive redress and to make sure that statements, recommendations, observations, and guidance from the U.N. incorporate an intersectional gender and disability rights perspective. 

Chapter 1 of this guide provides an introduction to the practice and procedures of the three main U.N. human rights mechanisms: treaty bodies, Special Procedures, and the Universal Periodic Review. 

Chapter 2 identifies the ways in which civil society can engage with the U.N. human rights system. This section provides an overview of when and how civil society can provide necessary information to the U.N. human rights bodies and the advantages and challenges of different types of engagement.

Chapter 3 provides guidance on developing advocacy strategies for successful U.N. engagement, looking in greater detail at the type of information that civil society should be providing to the U.N. This section also discusses collaboration with other organizations and strategies (including media strategies) for implementing U.N. standards at the national level

Enabling a Global Human Rights Movement for Women and Girls with Disabilities: Global Disabled Women's Rights Advocacy Report

WOMEN ENABLED INTERNATIONAL INC.
March 2016

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WEI's Report is the first-ever report and map and it includes data, analysis and infographics of the leaders, venues, and locations where women's disability rights advocates and organizations are especially active, where the gaps are, and where there are opportunities for collaboration, and helps in achieving greater collective impact.

An overwhelmingly clear finding from the Report is that the growing number of disabled women and their organizations working for the rights of women and girls with disabilities is increasingly passionate, energetic and committed to this urgent effort. Furthermore, these women want to work collaboratively, share a desire to enhance their skills and demand their rights unequivocally. These findings form the basis for the development of enhanced mechanisms for collaboration and significantly increased funding for these organizations and this important work.

Through an online survey launched on August 18, 2015 and interviews conducted in January and February 2016, WEI produces this comprehensive mapping report of the field of advocates for the rights of women and girls with disabilities globally and nationally, released on March 8, 2016, International Women's Day.”

WomenEnabled.org

ORTOLEVA, Stephanie
Ed

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Women Enabled is an education and advocacy project developed to bring attention to the urgent need to advocate for the human rights of all women and girls and to include women and girls with disabilities in international resolutions, policies and programs addressing women’s human rights and development. This website features links to recent news, events and publications, and contains information about the project

Women enabled website

WOMEN ENABLED

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This website presents information about Women Enabled (WE), a non-governmental organization working to advance the human rights of women and girls worldwide, especially women and girls with disabilities. Links are provided to a comprehensive list of women enabled issues, in addition to related news and events, media and publications and advocacy advice to take action. This website is useful for anyone interested in the advancement of human rights for women and girls

WE issues : convention on the rights of persons with disabilities and the CRPD committee

WOMEN ENABLED

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This webpage presents information about the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (CRPD), the CRPD committee and women and girls with disabilities with the aim is to highlight that more comprehensive coverage of issues of concern to women and girls with disabilities should be included in this process. Links are provided to detailed Women Enabled’s analyses and recommendations, as well as the CRPD committee's list of issues and the CRPD committee's concluding observations for each country. Further, Women Enabled’s reviews the concluding observations prepared by the CRPD Committee to determine the extent to which issues of concern to women and girls with disabilities were addressed

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