A/HRC/28/41 Annex X Statement by the Chairperson of the Coordination Committee We, special procedures mandate holders, have taken note with interest of Human Rights Council resolution 26/11, adopted on 23 June 2014, on the “protection of the family”, and the panel discussion on 15 September 2014. We note with appreciation the emphasis on the structural problems of care responsibilities and the need to redistribute them not only between women and men, as was established by CEDAW in 1980, but also between the family and the State. We are also reassured that in the panel discussion, there was general acceptance that families are diverse and in this context, there should be no discrimination; and that violence within the family should be eliminated. We trust that the Human Rights Council will incorporate these positive elements in all its future work, in accordance with international standards. Yet we want to express our concern regarding the fact that the resolution made no reference to women’s right to equality within the family and the panel discussion erroneously equated the protection of the family with the protection of the rights of individual members of the family, in particular the rights of women to equality. We recall that the right to equality between women and men in the family is guaranteed under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. We therefore call on the Human Rights Council to ensure that in all future resolutions, concept notes and reports on the issue of the family, the right to equality between women and men and between girls and boys within the family be explicitly included as a fundamental human right. 48

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