as not enough not only by women with disability, but also other marginalized groups directly monitored by the Commission – urban poor women, members of the LGBQI+ community, IDPs, and women fisherfolks. This is particularly so in households with extended families, with elderly, with children, and with persons with disability and the ill. As the economy remains to be not fully open, and many who lost employment remained unemployed, the economic impact of the pandemic continues, with hunger at the door of the most vulnerable. Recommendations: This situationer has laid out in concrete terms, and with accounts from women, girls, and members of the LGBQI+ community the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The Philippines is a signatory to almost all of the human rights treaty, it is a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). During this period of crisis and new normal, the Philippines is obligated to ensure compliance with principles of non-discrimination and equality. Under CEDAW, it is obligated “that measures taken to address the COVID-19 pandemic do not directly or indirectly discriminate against women and girls. States parties also have an obligation to protect women from, and ensure accountability for, gender-based violence, enable women’s socio-economic empowerment and guarantee their participation in policy and decision making in all crisis responses and recovery efforts.”98 Pursuant to the principles of substantive equality, CEDAW advances intersectional approach in understanding obligations of states in ensuring fulfillment of rights. CEDAW stresses that ‘the discrimination of women based on sex and gender is inextricably linked with other factors that affect women, such as race, ethnicity, religion or belief, health, status, age, class, caste and sexual orientation and gender identity’. This reminds duty bearers to pay attention to how ‘discrimination on the basis of sex or gender may affect women belonging to such groups to a different degree or in different ways to men’ and of the need to ‘legally recognize and address such intersecting forms of discrimination and their compounded negative impact on the women.’99 It is then crucial for approaches, not only to be gendered – that is duly recognizing inequalities on the basis of gender i.e socially constructed roles, norms and stereotypes, but also intersectional – recognizing how multiple identities could compound vulnerabilities. Concretely, this require duty bearers to recognize and render visible these vulnerabilities, and to eliminate the same through adoption of programs, policies, and where appropriate temporary special measures. This is more so in period of crisis and pandemic. With the foregoing, the Commission reiterates its recommendations as set out in JMC-2020-01 with DILG (herein attached as Annex A), calling for a Gendered and Intersectional Response to COVID-19 Crisis, including ensuring prompt, effective, and survivor centered response to GBV. The Commission, taking off from the CEDAW Committee’s Guidance Note on COVID-19, the recommendations from the GIA, and during the sectoral and community monitoring further adds the need to: 1. Ensure participation of women and LGBQI+ organizations in the design, planning, and implementation of crisis interventions, transition, and recovery plans. • Participation should be meaningful and shall ensure participation of community and people’s organizations; 98 CEDAW Guidance note on COVID-19. CEDAW Committee. General Recommendation 28 on the Core Obligation of State Parties under CEDAW. https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G10/472/60/PDF/G1047260.pdf?OpenElement 99 28