A/HRC/40/60 102. Support should be provided to women defenders so that they are able to acquire knowledge and develop skills and capacities to conduct risk assessment and take mitigation measures, develop individual and collective security plans and protocols, deal with stigmatization, smear campaigns and online harassment, develop creative tactics and strategies for advocacy that lower the risks of retaliation and engage in practices for selfand collective care and well-being. Priority 7: Recognize that sexism and discrimination against women, girl and gender non-conforming defenders exist in communities and human rights movements and take measures to address them 103. Women defenders and their contributions are often made invisible, including within human rights movements. Those working on issues that challenge social, cultural or religious norms have found that they receive limited support from fellow defenders. For human rights movements to thrive, causes of discrimination, marginalization and fragmentation within movements must be addressed. More effort is needed to build solidarity between different groups in human rights movements and bridges with other movements. Priority 8: Ensure that funding enables women defenders in their diverse circumstances to promote and protect human rights in a continuous, sustainable and effective manner 104. The way funding operates is critical. Funding can strengthen and sustain women’s participation in human rights movements, but it can also diminish it. Short-term, projectoriented funding that does not cover staffing and core costs, for example, can be damaging to smaller NGOs. Funds with highly bureaucratic reporting requirements can also be inaccessible and impractical. Women defenders are chronically underfunded, especially those working on politically sensitive topics. More should be done to ensure that women working in grass-roots organizations, community-based organizations and small NGOs receive the funding they need. 105. Funders should be attentive to the multidimensional security needs of women defenders. Women defenders should be given the support they need to take measures for their physical safety, digital security, economic security and mental and emotional wellbeing. Such support might include making provision for security measures, security training, training on software and hardware for digital security, legal aid, bail, emergency relocation, health insurance, pensions, social security and well-being-related activities. 106. In one example of good practice, the With and For Girls Collective took 12 girl activists from different countries to the Human Rights Funders Network conference in Mexico City in October 2018. The girls developed 10 pledges that they would like funders to make – namely, to fund capacity-building, networking and mentoring opportunities for girl-led organizations; to fund informal, non-established groups; to make grant processes more accessible; to increase core and long-term funding of girl-led and girl-centred groups; to include girls in strategic decision-making; to acknowledge the intersectionality of girls’ issues; to ensure that there are protocols to give girls platforms from which to speak candidly about issues, beyond the confines of organizational alignment; to see girls not as trends or gimmicks but as real change makers; to collaborate with girls at the board level; and to actively seek out diverse, marginalized and hard-to-reach groups. IX. Conclusion and recommendations Conclusion 107. In conclusion, the Special Rapporteur recognizes and celebrates the significance of women defenders in the promotion and protection of human rights worldwide. Women have been critical to the furtherance of human rights worldwide, but, because of the way aspects of their identities and their actions are perceived, they continue to face systematic discrimination, marginalization and repression. The 18