A/HRC/40/CRP.1 1. To the Government of South Sudan: Advancing the Rights of Women • Fast track the finalization of the National Gender Policy, including measures to implement the equality provisions set out in the Transitional Constitution Bill of Rights which provide guarantees for equality and equity between women and men, and a 25 percent Affirmative Action for women in all spheres as temporary positive measure to redress past imbalance. Measures should incorporate a victim/survivor centred approach, acknowledging women as subjects of rights and promoting their agency and autonomy, including the evolving capacity of girls, from childhood to adolescence, ensuring participation, prevention, protection, prosecution, punishment and redress. They should also address data collection and monitoring and international cooperation to accelerate elimination of gender-based violence against women, taking account of intersecting forms of discrimination; • Ensure that the national justice system including the plural legal systems is strengthened to protect victims/survivors of gender-based violence, ensuring their access to justice and to an effective remedy which includes facilitating the investigation and prosecution of sexual and gender-based crimes consistent with international standards and in compliance with the principles of non-discrimination, in accordance with the guidance provided in the CEDAW Committee’s general recommendation No. 33 (2015); • Ensure effective access of victims to courts and tribunals; where the authorities respond to all cases of gender-based violence against women, including through the application of criminal law to prosecute the alleged perpetrators and bring them to trial in a fair, impartial, timely and expeditious manner and imposing adequate penalties. Fees or court charges should not be imposed on victim; • Ensure that gender-based violence against women is not mandatorily referred to alternative dispute resolution procedures, such as mediation and conciliation; • Eliminate discriminatory evidentiary rules and procedures, including procedures allowing for women's deprivation of liberty to protect them from violence, practices focused on ‘virginity’ and legal defences or mitigating factors based on culture, religion or male privilege. Such procedures also include traditional apologies, pardons from victims/survivors’ families or the subsequent marriage of the victim/survivor of sexual assault to the perpetrator, procedures that result in the harshest penalties, including stoning, lashing and death being often reserved to women, as well as judicial practices that disregard a history of gender-based violence to the detriment of women defendants; • Ensure that a data system is established to regularly collect, analyse and publish statistical data on the number of complaints about all forms of gender-based violence against women, including technology mediated violence, the number and types of protection orders issued, the rates of dismissal and withdrawal of complaints, prosecution and conviction rates as well as time taken for disposal of cases. The system should include information on the sentences imposed on perpetrators and the reparation, including compensation, provided for victims/survivors. All data should be disaggregated by type of violence, relationship between the victim/survivor and the perpetrator, as well as in relation to intersecting forms of discrimination against women and other relevant socio-demographic characteristics, including the age of the victim. The analysis of the data should enable the identification of protection failures and serve to improve and further develop preventive measures; and • Ensure that international and national organizations working in the field of women rights, SGBV, counselling, investigation etc. take all possible measures to coordinate their work with the view of ensuring that the “do not harm” principle is respected. Moreover, various stakeholders operating in South Sudan should make efforts to coordinate the collection and collation of data pertaining to SGBV, and share it accordingly. 204