Romania: Government must take further measures to ensure equality for women and girls – UN experts

​Romanian version

BUCHAREST (6 March 2020) – Romania, despite having undertaken laudable reforms and measures to ensure gender equality, must do more to ensure equality for all women and girls, said a group of UN experts at the end of their 10-day visit to the country.

"We are concerned by the high rates of trafficking in women and girls; domestic and sexual violence; forced marriage; early marriage; teenage pregnancies and consequent school drop out of girls prevalent in rural areas," said the UN Working Group on discrimination against women and girls.

"Roma women and girls in particular face discrimination and are subjected to racial prejudices in addition to poverty and social exclusion.

"Romania has established a solid legal and institutional framework and has been taking measures to ensure gender equality. However, the implementation remains the main challenge, because of problems such as frequent change in government, persistence of gender stereotyping, and high level of poverty, particularly in rural areas," the experts said.

The Working Group issued a series of recommendations. "The Government should promote women's participation in politics and decision-making positions. It should take measures to secure women's access to decent job opportunities and high quality social services including education and health services, which remains a particular challenge for women in rural areas.

"We commend the Romanian Government for taking necessary legislative reforms to combat trafficking and sexual violence, including provisions on temporary protection orders. The Government should now ensure effective implementation, including through the prosecution of crimes with a gender perspective and the provision of relevant services for survivors.

"The Government should also take all the necessary measures to prevent early marriage and drop out of school girls and to ensure human rights-based sexuality education in schools."

The Working Group also urged the authorities to take context-sensitive measures to combat violence against Roma women and girls.

"During our visit, we observed limited understanding of substantive gender equality and of the need of targeted measures to achieve it. Addressing gender stereotypes is necessary to ensure enjoyment by women and girls of their human rights," the UN experts said.

"We observed also the positive role of civil society in bridging the gaps in the protection of women and girls' rights. We therefore encourage the Government to make use of their expertise, support them with adequate funding and infrastructure, and include them in the design, planning and monitoring of all public policies and programmes."

The Working Group will present its final report to the Human Rights Council in June 2021.

ENDS

The UN Working Group on discrimination against women and girls was created by the Human Rights Council in 2011 to identify, promote and exchange views, in consultation with States and other actors, on good practices related to the elimination of laws that discriminate against women. The Group is also tasked with developing a dialogue with States and other actors on laws that have a discriminatory impact where women are concerned.

The Working Group is comprises five independent experts: The Chairperson: Meskerem Geset Techane (Ethiopia), Elizabeth Broderick (Australia), Alda Facio (Costa Rica),  Ivana Radačić (Croatia) and Melissa Upreti (Nepal).

UN Human Rights, country page – Romania  

For inquiries and media requests, please contact: Alicia Pons (+41 22 917 9705) / apons@ohchr.org) or write to wgdiscriminationwomen@ohchr.org 

For media enquiries regarding other UN independent experts, please contact Xabier Celaya (+ 41 22 917 9445 / xcelaya@ohchr.org)

Follow news related to the UN's independent human rights experts on Twitter @UN_SPExperts.

Concerned about the world we live in?

Then STAND UP for someone's rights today.

#Standup4humanrights

and visit the web page at http://www.standup4humanrights.org