CEDAW/C/GC/34
are not in conformity with the Convention must be brought into line with it and with
general recommendation No. 33 (2015) on women’s access to justice.
9.
States parties should ensure that legal frameworks are non-discriminatory
and guarantee access to justice to rural women, in line with general
recommendation No. 33, including by:
(a) Conducting a gender impact analysis of current laws to assess their
effect on rural women;
(b) Enacting legislation to regulate the relationship between different
mechanisms within plural legal systems in order to reduce conflicts of law and
ensure that rural women may claim their rights;
(c) Increasing rural women’s awareness and legal literacy by providing
them with information on their legal rights and on the existence of plural legal
systems (where relevant);
(d)
Ensuring free or affordable access to legal services and legal aid;
(e) Promoting rural women’s legal empowerment, including through
gender-responsive quasi-judicial and judicial procedures;
(f) Dismantling barriers to rural women’s access to justice by ensuring
that formal and informal justice mechanisms and dispute resolution
alternatives are available to them;
(g) Ensuring physical access to courts and other justice mechanisms, for
example through the provision of mobile courts that are accessible to rural
women;
(h) Providing training to the judiciary, lawyers, law enforcement
officials, paralegals, traditional leaders and other relevant authorities and
officials in rural areas on the rights of rural women and the negative impact of
discrimination against them.
10. Discrimination against rural women cannot be fully understood without taking
into account the macroeconomic roots of gender inequality. States often fail to
acknowledge the role of rural women and girls in unpaid work, their contribution to
the gross domestic product and, therefore, to sustainable development. Bilateral and
multilateral agreements on trade, tax and other economic and fiscal policies can
have a significant negative impact on the lives of rural women. Environmental
issues, including climate change and natural disasters, often provoked by the
unsustainable use of natural resources, as well as poor waste management practices,
also have detrimental impacts on the well-being of rural women. Gender-neutral
policies, reforms and laws may uphold and strengthen existing inequalities related
to all of the above.
11. States parties should ensure that macroeconomic policies, including trade,
fiscal and investment policies, as well bilateral and multilateral agreements, are
responsive to the needs of rural women and strengthen the productive and
investing capacities of small-scale women producers. They should address the
negative and differential impacts of economic policies, including agricultural
and general trade liberalization, privatization and the commodification of land,
water and natural resources, on the lives of rural women and the fulfilment of
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