A/RES/80/184 GA
Improvement of the situation of women and girls in rural areas : resolution / adopted by the General Assembly
80
Session
178
Yes
3
No
0
Abstentions
| Draft symbol | A/C.3/80/L.19 |
|---|---|
| Adopted symbol | A/RES/80/184 |
| Category | SOCIAL CONDITIONS AND EQUITY |
| P5 Positions |
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| UN Document | A/RES/80/184 ↗ |
Vote Recorded Vote — A/80/PV.62
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Full text of resolution
United Nations
A/RES/80/184
General Assembly
Distr.: General
22 December 2025
25-20995 (E)
*2520995*
Eightieth session
Agenda item 26 (a)
Advancement of women: advancement of women
Resolution adopted by the General Assembly
on 15 December 2025
[on the report of the Third Committee (A/80/545, para. 5)]
80/184. Improvement of the situation of women and girls in rural areas
The General Assembly,
Recalling its resolutions 56/129 of 19 December 2001, 58/146 of 22 December
2003, 60/138 of 16 December 2005, 62/136 of 18 December 2007, 64/140 of
18 December 2009, 66/129 of 19 December 2011, 68/139 of 18 December 2013,
70/132 of 17 December 2015, 72/148 of 19 December 2017, 74/126 of 18 December
2019, 76/140 of 16 December 2021 and 78/181 of 19 December 2023,
Reaffirming the obligation of all States to promote and protect all human rights
and fundamental freedoms, and also that all forms of discrimination, including
discrimination against women and girls, are contrary to the Charter of the United
Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,1 the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights,2 the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights,3 the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
against Women,4 the Convention on the Rights of the Child,5 the Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities6 and other human rights instruments,
Reaffirming also the commitment made to gender equality and the
empowerment of all women and girls, including those in rural areas, contained in the
outcome documents of relevant international conferences and summits, in particular
the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World
Conference on Women,7 the outcome of the twenty-third special session of the
_______________
1 Resolution 217 A (III).
2 See resolution 2200 A (XXI), annex.
3 Ibid.
4 United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 1249, No. 20378.
5 Ibid., vol. 1577, No. 27531.
6 Ibid., vol. 2515, No. 44910.
7 Report of the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, 4–15 September 1995 (United
Nations publication, Sales No. E.96.IV.13), chap. I, resolution 1, annexes I and II.
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General Assembly entitled “Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace
for the twenty-first century”8 and the outcome document of the high-level plenary
meeting of the General Assembly known as the World Conference on Indigenous
Peoples,9 and recalling other instruments, as appropriate, such as the United Nations
Declaration on the Right to Development,10
Reaffirming further the outcome document of the United Nations summit for the
adoption of the post-2015 development agenda, entitled “Transforming our world: the
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”,11 and the Sevilla Commitment adopted
at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, 12
Recalling that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development addresses the need
to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, in order to
ensure that no one is left behind, and that the systematic mainstreaming of a gender
perspective in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda is crucial,
Recognizing that the achievement of full human potential and of sustainable
development is not possible if one half of humanity continues to be denied its full
human rights and opportunities,
Taking note of the Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Women’s Economic
Empowerment,
Recognizing its resolution 76/300 of 28 July 2022 on the human right to a clean,
healthy and sustainable environment,
Recognizing also the threat that environmental degradation, climate change,
biodiversity loss, desertification and unsustainable development pose to the
enjoyment of all human rights by present and future generations, in particular women
and girls,
Acknowledging that achieving gender equality, the empowerment of all women
and girls and women’s full, equal effective and meaningful participation and decision-
making in the context of climate change, environmental degradation and disaster risk
reduction is essential for achieving sustainable development,
Recalling the agreed conclusions of the Commission on the Status of Women at
its sixty-second session13 and its priority theme “Challenges and opportunities in
achieving gender equality and the empowerment of rural women and girls”, which
was reviewed at the sixty-seventh session of the Commission on the Status of Women,
Stressing the need for Governments to take measures to support the rights, well-
being and resilience of women and girls living in rural or remote areas and on islands,
Recognizing that progress on the achievement of gender equality and the
empowerment of all women and girls, in particular in rural areas, has been held back
owing to the persistence of historical and structural barriers and unequal power
relations between women and men, poverty and inequalities and disadvantages in
access to resources and opportunities that limit women’s and girls’ capabilities,
growing gaps in equality of opportunity, discriminatory laws, policies, attitudes,
harmful customary and contemporary practices and gender stereotypes and negative
social norms, as well as women’s and girls’ unequal share of unpaid care work and
_______________
8 Resolution S-23/2, annex, and resolution S-23/3, annex.
9 Resolution 69/2.
10 Resolution 41/128, annex.
11 Resolution 70/1.
12 Resolution 79/323, annex.
13 Official Records of the Economic and Social Council, 2018, Supplement No. 7 (E/2018/27),
chap. I, sect. A.
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precarious working conditions experienced by many women engaged in paid care
work, and taking into consideration the impacts of armed conflicts on rural women
and girls and the spiralling effects of the cost-of-living crisis, climate and
environment emergencies and the continuing effects of the coronavirus disease
(COVID‑19) pandemic that have compounded underlying and persistent gender gaps
and inequality,
Expressing its deep concern that discrimination and violence against women and
girls, including those in rural areas, continue to occur in all parts of the world and that
all forms of violence and discrimination, including multiple and intersecting forms of
discrimination, that women and girls face are impediments to the development of their
full potential as equal partners with men and boys in all aspects of life, as well as
obstacles to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals,
Expressing its deep concern also that, while agriculture continues to be the most
important employment sector for women in low-income and lower-middle-income
countries, with an estimated 25 per cent of employed women around the world
working in agriculture, they are relegated to informal, low-paid, low-skilled, labour-
intensive and vulnerable jobs, at risk of exploitation and abuse and disproportionately
affected by hunger, malnutrition, food insecurity and poverty, including the
feminization of poverty, in part as a result of gender inequality and discrimination,
Expressing its deep concern further that while women contribute more than 50
per cent of the food produced worldwide, they account for 70 per cent of the world’s
hungry, that a widening gender gap in food insecurity, which grew from 1.7 per cent
in 2019 to 4.3 per cent in 2021, with 31.9 per cent of women in a state of moderate or
severe food insecurity compared with 27.6 per cent of men, indicates that women
around the world and across regions are more food-insecure than men,
Expressing concern that many rural women continue to be economically and
socially disadvantaged because of their limited access to economic resources and
opportunities and their limited access or lack of access to quality education,
healthcare services, justice, land, sustainable and time- and labour-saving
infrastructure and technology, water and sanitation and other resources, as well as to
credit, extension services and agricultural inputs, and expressing concern also about
their exclusion from planning and decision-making and their disproportionate share
of unpaid care and domestic work,
Emphasizing that rural women’s poverty is directly related to the absence of
economic opportunities and autonomy and the lack of access to economic and
productive resources, quality education and support services and of women’s
participation in the decision-making process, and recognizing that rural women’s
poverty and lack of empowerment as well as their exclusion from social and economic
policies can place them at increased risk of violence that can impede their social and
economic development, as well as the achievement of the Sustainable Development
Goals,
Recognizing that, despite gains in providing access to quality education, rural
girls are still more likely than rural boys to remain excluded from education and that
among the gender-specific barriers to girls’ equal enjoyment of their right to education
are the feminization of poverty, child labour undertaken by girls, child, early and
forced marriage, female genital mutilation, early and repeat pregnancies, all forms of
violence, including gender-based violence, abuse and harassment on the way to and
from and at school, in their technology-mediated environment, the lack of safe and
adequate sanitation facilities, including for menstrual hygiene management, the
disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic work performed by girls and
gender stereotypes and negative social norms that lead families and communities to
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place less value on the education of girls than that of boys and may influence the
decision of parents to allow girls to attend school,
Recognizing also the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of
Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security 14 and
the Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems, 15
endorsed by the Committee on World Food Security, which embrace gender equality
as one of the main guiding principles of implementation in order to help to address
the ongoing disparities with regard to access to and control of land and other natural
resources,
Deeply concerned that climate change poses a challenge to poverty eradication
and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, threatens food security
and increases the risks of famine and adversely impacts the health and well-being of
rural women and their families, and that rural women and girls, especially in
developing countries, are disproportionately affected by the impacts of
desertification, deforestation, sand and dust storms, natural disasters, persistent
drought, extreme weather events, sea level rise, coastal erosion and ocean
acidification and often have limited capacities to adapt to climate change,
Recognizing that women and girls in rural areas may be particularly vulnerable
to violence because of multidimensional poverty and lack of access to social care and
protection services and, as applicable, employment opportunities, as well as negative
social norms,
1.
Takes note of the report of the Secretary-General;16
2.
Urges Member States, in collaboration with the organizations of the United
Nations system and civil society, as appropriate, to continue their efforts to implement
the outcome of and to ensure an integrated and coordinated follow-up to the relevant
United Nations conferences and summits, including their reviews, and to attach
greater importance to the improvement of the situation of rural women and girls in
their national, regional and global development strategies by, inter alia:
(a)
Creating an enabling environment for improving their situation and
ensuring systematic attention to their needs, priorities and contributions, as well as
gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, including through
enhanced cooperation and a gender perspective, and the full and equal participation
of all women in the development, implementation and follow-up of macroeconomic
policies, including development policies and programmes and poverty eradication
strategies, including poverty reduction strategy papers, where they exist, aimed at
implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development;
(b)
Encouraging Member States to consider adopting and pursuing national
financial inclusion strategies and gender-responsive strategies to end the structural
barriers to women’s equal access to economic resources and to expand peer learning,
experience-sharing and capacity-building in rural areas;
(c)
Supporting the important role of civil society in promoting the realization
and fulfilment of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all women, including
rural women;
_______________
14 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, document CL 144/9 (C 2013/20),
appendix D.
15 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, document C 2015/20, appendix D.
16 A/80/262.
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(d)
Taking steps in the design, implementation and pursuit of fiscal policies
and gender-responsive budgeting to promote gender equality and the empowerment
of rural women and girls;
(e)
Pursuing the political and socioeconomic empowerment of rural women
and supporting their full and equal participation in decision-making at all levels,
including through affirmative action, where appropriate, including by promoting and
protecting the right to vote and to be elected and the right to freedom of expression,
peaceful assembly and association, and through support for women’s and farmers’
organizations in which subsistence and smallholder women farmers are members,
labour unions, cooperatives or other associations and civil society groups promoting
rural women’s rights;
(f)
Promoting consultation with and the participation of rural women and, as
appropriate, girls, including those who are Indigenous, those with disabilities and
older women, through their organizations and networks, in the design, development
and implementation of and follow-up to programmes and strategies for gender
equality, the empowerment of women and rural development;
(g)
Ensuring that the perspectives of rural women and girls are taken into
account and that rural women fully, meaningfully and equally participate in the
design, implementation, follow-up and evaluation of policies and activities related to
conflict prevention, the mitigation of post-conflict situations, peace mediation, the
impacts of climate change and emergencies, including natural disasters, humanitarian
assistance, peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction, and taking appropriate
measures to eliminate all forms of violence and discrimination against rural women
and girls in this regard;
(h)
Integrating a gender perspective into the design, implementation and
evaluation of and follow-up to development policies, plans and programmes,
including budget policies, where lacking, ensuring coordination between line
ministries, gender policymakers, gender machineries and other relevant government
organizations and institutions with gender expertise, and paying increased attention
to the needs of rural women and girls to ensure that they benefit from policies and
programmes adopted in all spheres and that the disproportionate number of rural
women living in poverty is reduced;
(i)
Mainstreaming a gender perspective in decision-making processes and the
governance of natural resources, leveraging the participation and influence of women
in managing the sustainable use of natural resources, and enhancing the capacities of
Governments, civil society and development partners to better understand and address
gender issues in the management and governance of natural resources;
(j)
Enacting and implementing policies to eradicate poverty and reduce
inequalities by promoting sustainable livelihoods, decent work and income security
for women in rural areas to enhance the well-being and resilience of all rural women
and girls, including women migrant workers;
(k)
Implementing effective, high-impact, quality-assured, people-centred,
gender- and disability-responsive and evidence-based interventions to meet the health
needs of rural women and girls, particularly those in vulnerable situations, throughout
their life course;
(l)
Strengthening measures, including resource generation, to improve
women’s health, including maternal health, by addressing the specific health,
nutrition and basic needs of rural women and taking concrete measures to enhance
and provide access to the highest attainable standards of physical and mental health
for women of all ages in rural areas, as well as quality, affordable and universally
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accessible primary healthcare and support services, including prenatal and postnatal
healthcare, emergency obstetric care, family planning, information and education,
increasing knowledge, awareness and support for the elimination of harmful practices
and the prevention, treatment and care of sexually transmitted infections, including
HIV, and ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive
rights in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference
on Population and Development,17 the Beijing Platform for Action18 and the outcome
documents of their review conferences;
(m) Strengthening the prevention, treatment and care of infections, such as
HIV, in rural areas, by providing accessible information, social care services and
infrastructure;
(n)
Taking appropriate measures to ensure that women’s and girls’
disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic work, as well as contributions to
on-farm and off-farm production, is recognized, including by fully recognizing and
valuing unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services,
infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared
responsibility within the household and the family, and to promote nationally
appropriate policies and initiatives supporting the reconciliation of work and family
life and the equal sharing of responsibilities between men and women with a view to
reducing and equitably distributing such unpaid work, including through, inter alia,
the provision of infrastructure, technology and public services, such as water and
sanitation, renewable energy, transport and information and communications
technology, as well as addressing the need for accessible, affordable and quality
childcare and care facilities in rural areas;
(o)
Promoting sustainable, gender-responsive, quality, reliable and resilient
infrastructure, including by scaling up investment in health facilities in rural areas
and by improving access to safe drinking water and sanitation, including through
provisions for menstrual hygiene management, and safe cooking and heating practices
to improve the health and nutrition of rural women and girls;
(p)
Investing in and strengthening efforts to meet the basic needs of rural
women, including needs relating to their food security and nutrition and that of their
families, and to promote adequate standards of living for them, as well as decent
conditions for work and improved access to local, regional and global markets through
improved availability, access to and use of critical rural infrastructure, such as energy
and transport, science and technology, local services, capacity-building and human
resources development measures and the provision of a safe and reliable water supply
and sanitation, nutritional programmes, affordable housing programmes, education
and literacy programmes, social support measures and healthcare, including HIV
prevention, treatment, care, including psychosocial aspects, and support services;
(q)
Fully engaging men and boys, including community leaders, as strategic
partners and allies in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women and
girls, and eliminating all forms of discrimination and violence against them, including
by working to counteract attitudes by which women and girls are regarded as
subordinate to men and boys;
(r)
Eliminating all forms of violence against rural women and girls in public
and private spaces through multisectoral and coordinated approaches to prevent and
respond to violence against rural women and girls, to investigate, prosecute and
_______________
17 Report of the International Conference on Population and Development, Cairo, 5–13 September
1994 (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.95.XIII.18), chap. I, resolution 1, annex.
18 Report of the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, 4–15 September 1995 (United
Nations publication, Sales No. E.96.IV.13), chap. I, resolution 1, annex II.
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punish the perpetrators of violence against rural women and girls and end impunity
and to provide protection as well as equal access to comprehensive social, health and
legal services for all victims and survivors to support their full recovery and
reintegration into society, including by providing access to psychosocial support and
rehabilitation, and bearing in mind the importance of all women and girls living free
from violence, such as gender-related killings, including femicide, and harmful
practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation, as
well as of addressing the structural and underlying causes of violence against women
and girls through enhanced prevention measures, research and strengthened
coordination and monitoring and evaluation, by, inter alia, encouraging awareness-
raising activities;
(s)
Designing and implementing national policies and legal frameworks that
promote and protect the full enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms by
rural women and girls, and creating an environment that does not tolerate violations
or abuses of their rights, including domestic violence, sexual violence, gender-based
violence and discrimination, including multiple and intersecting forms of
discrimination;
(t)
Promoting safe public spaces for women and girls in rural areas and
improving their security and safety, including in public transportation systems and
infrastructure, preventing and eliminating violence and harassment against women on
their journey to and from work, and protecting women and girls from being physically
threatened or assaulted, including from sexual violence, while collecting household
water and fuel and when accessing sanitation facilities outside their homes or
practising open defecation;
(u)
Ensuring that the rights of older women in rural areas are taken into
account with regard to their equal access to basic social services, appropriate social
protection and/or social security measures, equal access to and control of economic
resources and their empowerment through access to financial and infrastructure
services, with special focus on the provision of support to older women, including
Indigenous women, who often have access to few resources and are often more
vulnerable;
(v)
Valuing and supporting the critical role and contribution of rural women,
including Indigenous women in rural areas, in the conservation and sustainable use
of traditional crops and biodiversity for present and future generations as an essential
contribution to food security and nutrition, recognizing that rural women are
disproportionately affected by biodiversity loss and land degradation and should
therefore be meaningfully engaged in efforts to address such matters;
(w) Promoting the rights of women and girls with disabilities in rural areas,
including by ensuring access on an equal basis to productive employment and decent
work, economic and financial resources and disability-sensitive infrastructure and
services, in particular in relation to health and education, as well as by ensuring that
their priorities and needs are fully incorporated into policies and programmes,
through, inter alia, their participation in decision-making processes;
(x)
Promoting rural women’s economic empowerment by realizing their right
to work and rights at work, building their capacities and skills to manage enterprises
and cooperatives, facilitating formalization and ensuring their financial and digital
inclusion and equal access to natural resources and economic and productive
resources, including access to, use of, ownership of and control over land, including
diverse types of land tenure, property and appropriate new technology, as well as
inheritance rights, developing specific assistance programmes and advisory services
to promote economic skills of rural women in banking, modern trading and financial
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procedures, including financial literacy and consumer protection, and providing
affordable microcredit and other financial and business services to a greater number
of women in rural areas, in particular female heads of households, for their economic
empowerment;
(y)
Supporting women entrepreneurs and women smallholder farmers,
including those in subsistence farming, by continuing to provide public investment
and to encourage private investment in rural women to close the gender gap in
agriculture, and facilitating their access to extension and financial services,
agricultural inputs and land, water, sanitation and irrigation, markets and innovative
technologies;
(z)
Mobilizing resources, including at the national level and through official
development assistance, for increasing women’s access to existing savings and credit
schemes, as well as targeted programmes that provide women with capital, knowledge
and tools that enhance their economic capacities;
(aa) Seeking to ensure and improve equal access for rural women to decent
work in agricultural and non‑agricultural sectors, supporting and promoting
opportunities in small and medium-sized enterprises, sustainable social enterprises
and cooperatives and improving working conditions;
(bb) Investing in infrastructure and in time- and labour-saving technologies,
including sustainable energy, safe drinking water and sanitation and information and
communications technologies, especially in rural areas, benefiting women and girls
by reducing their burden of domestic activities, affording the opportunity for girls to
attend school and for women to engage in self-employment or to participate in the
labour market;
(cc) Taking appropriate measures to raise public awareness among rural women
and girls about the risks of trafficking in persons, including the factors that make rural
women and girls vulnerable to trafficking, and eliminating the demand that fosters all
forms of exploitation against them, including sexual exploitation and forced labour;
(dd) Supporting remunerative non‑agricultural employment for rural women,
including in the informal sector, including measures to improve working conditions,
increase access to productive resources, invest in relevant infrastructure, public
services and time- and labour-saving technologies, promote rural women’s paid
employment in the formal economy and address the structural and underlying causes
of the difficult conditions faced by rural women;
(ee) Taking steps to build the capacities and skills of rural women and their
enterprises and cooperatives and to design or develop and implement procurement
policies and measures to enable rural women and their enterprises and cooperatives
to benefit from public and private sector procurement processes, recognizing that the
promotion of rural women’s enterprises and cooperatives can sustainably contribute
to the economic empowerment of rural women;
(ff) Promoting programmes and services to enable rural women and men to
reconcile their work and family responsibilities and to encourage men throughout
their life cycle to share, equally with women and girls, household, childcare and other
care responsibilities;
(gg) Developing and adopting strategies to decrease women’s and girls’
vulnerability to environmental factors, including gender-responsive strategies on
mitigation and adaptation to climate change, to support the resilience and adaptive
capacities of women and girls to respond to the adverse effects of climate change,
through, inter alia, the promotion of their health and well-being, as well as access to
sustainable livelihoods, and the provision of adequate resources to ensure women’s
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full participation in decision-making at all levels on environmental issues, in
particular on strategies and policies related to the impacts of climate change, such as
desertification, deforestation, sand and dust storms and natural disasters, persistent
drought, extreme weather events, sea level rise, coastal erosion and ocean
acidification and loss of biodiversity, on the lives of rural women and girls, and
ensuring the integration of their specific needs into humanitarian responses to natural
disasters, into the planning, delivery, implementation and monitoring of disaster risk
reduction policies, in particular urban and rural infrastructure and land-use planning
and resettlement and relocation planning during the aftermath of natural disasters, and
into sustainable natural resources management;
(hh) Building the resilience of rural women and girls, in particular women
smallholder farmers, to climate change and environmental degradation (inter alia,
deforestation, desertification and the loss of agricultural biodiversity), including by
promoting appropriate use of relevant ancestral, Indigenous and modern technological
practices and knowledge and strengthening access to extension services, information
and training;
(ii) Considering the adoption, where appropriate, of national legislation to
protect the knowledge, innovations and practices of Indigenous women and women
in local communities relating to traditional medicines, biodiversity and Indigenous
technologies;
(jj) Addressing the lack of quality, accessible, timely and reliable data
disaggregated by sex and age and statistical information on disabilities, to help with
the measurement of progress and to ensure that no one is left behind, including by
intensifying efforts to include women’s unpaid work in official statistics, and
developing a systematic and comparative research base on rural women that will
inform policy and programme decisions;
(kk) Strengthening the capacity of national statistical offices and other relevant
government institutions to collect, analyse and disseminate data, disaggregated by sex
and age, and gender statistics on time use, unpaid work, land tenure, energy, water
and sanitation, among other things, to support policies and actions to improve the
situation of rural women and girls and to monitor and track the implementation of
such policies and actions;
(ll) Guaranteeing the universal registration of births, including in rural areas,
and ensuring the timely registration of all marriages for individuals living in rural
areas, including by removing physical, administrative, procedural and any other
barriers that impede access to registration and by providing, where lacking,
mechanisms for the registration of customary and religious marriages, bearing in mind
the vital importance of birth registration for the realization of the rights of individuals;
(mm) Designing, revising and implementing laws to ensure that rural women are
accorded full and equal rights to own and lease land and other property, including
through the equal rights to economic and productive resources, access to basic
services, ownership and control over land and other forms of property, inheritance,
natural resources, appropriate new technology and financial services, including
banking and microfinancing, and undertaking administrative reforms and all
necessary measures to give women the same right as men to credit, capital, finance,
appropriate technologies and vocational training, to improve access to markets and
information and to ensure their equal access to justice and legal support;
(nn) Taking appropriate measures to adopt or develop legislation and policies
that provide rural women with access to land and support women’s cooperatives and
agricultural programmes, including for subsistence agriculture, in order to contribute
to school feeding programmes as a pull factor to keep children, in particular girl
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children, in school, noting that school meals and take-home rations attract and retain
children in schools and recognizing that school feeding is an incentive to enhance
enrolment and reduce absenteeism, especially for girls;
(oo) Supporting a gender-sensitive education system, including through
approaches that attract and retain female students and teachers and that consider the
specific needs of rural women and girls in order to eliminate gender stereotypes and
discriminatory tendencies affecting them, including through community-based
dialogue involving women and men and girls and boys;
(pp) Eliminating gender disparities in the realization of the right to education
and ensuring full and equal participation in and completion of inclusive quality
education (primary, secondary and tertiary education, including vocational and
technical education), as well as early childhood education, promoting lifelong
learning opportunities for rural women and girls and the elimination of female
illiteracy, including through eliminating the discriminatory policies of excluding
pregnant and married girls from schools, quality teacher training, recruitment and
retention of teachers in rural areas, especially women teachers where they are
underrepresented, and building gender-sensitive education facilities that provide a
safe, non‑violent, inclusive and effective learning environment for all and facilitate
an effective transition from education or unemployment to decent work;
(qq) Promoting education, training and relevant information programmes for
rural and farming women through the use of affordable and appropriate technologies
and the mass media, and taking concrete measures to improve rural women’s skills,
productivity and employment opportunities through technical, agricultural and
vocational education and training;
3.
Encourages Member States, United Nations entities and all other relevant
stakeholders to promote access to social protection for female-headed rural
households;
4.
Encourages Member States, appropriate United Nations entities and all
other relevant stakeholders to promote the full and equal participation of rural women,
including Indigenous women as well as women farmers, fishers and agricultural
workers, in sustainable agricultural and rural development;
5.
Requests the relevant organizations and bodies of the United Nations
system, in particular those dealing with issues of development, to address and support
the empowerment of rural women and their specific needs in their programmes and
strategies;
6.
Stresses the need to identify the best practices for ensuring that rural
women have access to and full and equal participation in the area of information and
communications technology, to address the priorities and needs of rural women and
girls as active users of information and to ensure their participation in developing and
implementing global, regional and national information and communications
technology strategies, taking appropriate educational measures to eliminate gender
stereotypes regarding women in the field of technology;
7.
Encourages Member States to enhance safe, accessible and inclusive
digital connectivity in rural areas to promote, inter alia, the access of rural women
and girls to digital services, in areas such as health, education, social security, public
administration and other relevant areas, ensuring there are available solutions and
options to avoid the negative impacts that digital technology can have and to close
digital divides, including the rural-urban, youth-older persons and gender digital
divides;
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8.
Also encourages Member States to consider the concluding observations
and recommendations of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against
Women and of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights concerning
their reports to those Committees when formulating policies and designing
programmes focused on the improvement of the situation of rural women, including
those to be developed and implemented in cooperation with relevant international
organizations;
9.
Invites Governments to promote the economic empowerment of rural
women, including through entrepreneurship training, and to adopt gender-responsive
and climate-sensitive rural development strategies and agricultural production,
including budget frameworks and relevant assessment measures, as well as to ensure
that the needs and priorities of rural women and girls are systematically addressed
and that they can effectively contribute to poverty alleviation, hunger eradication and
food security and nutrition;
10. Invites Governments, relevant international organizations, the specialized
agencies and civil society organizations to continue to observe the International Day
of Rural Women annually, on 15 October, as proclaimed by the General Assembly in
its resolution 62/136;
11. Requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its
eighty-second session a report on the improvement of the situation of women and girls
in rural areas.
62nd plenary meeting
15 December 2025
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