A/HRC/33/24 C. Participation 54. Throughout the technical guidance, participation of all affected groups is particularly emphasized. Such participation must permeate all aspects of implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, from devising policies and programmes to budget allocation, implementation, monitoring and review. Special efforts may be required to build environments that foster participation and active engagement of affected groups, particularly women and girls. That will include elimination of discriminatory laws and practices that silence or diminish women’s voices or threaten their security; making processes accessible to women and girls in terms of taking account of their other responsibilities at work, home or school, as well as building their capacity to engage effectively; and ensuring that freedoms of expression, association and assembly are fully protected. Furthermore, participatory processes must result in programming that is responsive to those priorities expressed. D. Focus on inequality and discrimination 55. A rights-based approach, as explained in the technical guidance, demands explicit focus on those groups that are most marginalized and excluded. Such priority attention to the elimination of discrimination is mirrored in the call in the 2030 Agenda to leave no one behind. One of the most consistent criticisms of the Millennium Development Goals was the fact that, in many cases, the focus on aggregate progress neglected the people who were in the most deprived situations. For example, while the overall rates of skilled attendance at birth were shown to increase from 59 per cent in 1990 to 71 per cent in 2014, women in the lowest quintile groups and living in rural areas are still much less likely to access such care.10 Indeed, women belonging to particularly marginalized groups and experiencing multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination are often the most at risk of suffering poor health and human rights violations. Recognizing who is deprived of the enjoyment of their rights and building policies and programmes on the foundation of that recognition is a fundamental element of a rights-based approach and should be fully integrated in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. 56. To ascertain who is experiencing discrimination and inequality, reliable, disaggregated data must be available and the 2030 Agenda has a strong focus on an expansive list of groups to be given special attention. In addition to data disaggregation, measures must be taken to ensure that all marginalized groups are accounted for, especially those experiencing multiple forms of discrimination, who may be invisible in official statistics used to measure progress. For example, data collected to ascertain “met need for contraception” only includes women who are married or in union, but not other women or adolescents who are sexually active. Data collection and analysis must be understood within the context of many societies where there is a resistance to challenging gender norms and women’s and girls’ sexuality is considered something to be controlled. Other groups who may be invisible in official statistics include young adolescents (10-14 years old), migrants in an irregular situation, persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and persons whose status is criminalized. 10 “Millennium Development Goals report 2015” (New York, 2015), pp. 39-40. 13