A/HRC/30/13
help the work of eliminating domestic violence, the Government submitted an application
to a United Nations trust fund and was awarded US$ 372,000 for the implementation of the
Act for three years according to the Act’s costing table developed by UNDP. Furthermore,
development of a family health study survey, with assistance from the United Nations
Population Fund (UNFPA), began in 2012; the survey was projected to be launched later in
2015. One of the recommendations arising from the exercise was to improve administrative
data collection and analysis with regard to health, justice, education and social services.
That would strengthen the referral system among essential services while allowing the
country to carry out its analysis of the services to ensure that they were responding to the
high prevalence rates of violence against women recorded in the survey, and make policy
and programme reform where administrative reporting was low. The Marshall Islands
stated that it urgently needed international assistance at the grass-roots and local levels to
better achieve visible elimination of domestic violence.
14.
Other policies had been developed in the Marshall Islands, namely the National
Youth Policy (2009–2014), with assistance from NGOs and regional development partners;
the National Reproductive Health Policy/Strategy (2014–2016), with assistance from the
UNFPA Pacific Subregional Office; the Country Prevention of Adolescent Pregnancy: A
Three-Year Strategy (2014–2016), with assistance from UNFPA; and the Marshallese Joint
National Plan for Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Management (2014–2018),
with help from the Secretariat of the Pacific Community Applied Geoscience and
Technology Division, the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme and
UNDP. The delegation thanked those international and regional partners, and asked for
their continued support.
15.
The Marshall Islands emphasized that those accomplishments had been made while
it continued to face the challenges of climate change and the lingering effects of the United
States Nuclear Testing Program. The country had been outspoken in seeking to address the
human rights dimension of climate change, including in early 2009, when it told the Human
Rights Council in a formal report that climate risks would seriously threaten nearly each
and every core human right sector, including the right to statehood for the entire nation. In
2013, the country led efforts for the Pacific Islands Forum leaders to adopt the Majuro
Declaration for Climate Leadership, which set forward national commitments to reduce
emissions. That principle — that every nation, large and small, rich and poor, commit to
action — had helped change multilateral politics. The country was also working very hard
to secure a strong and practical post-2020 climate agreement in Paris, but the Paris
agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was very
likely to leave serious exposure to human rights risks.
16.
The Marshall Islands also emphasized that impacts of climate change on local
communities continued to worsen; a recent drought had affected a quarter of the nation and
necessitated the serious involvement of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs of the United Nations. Unusually strong king tides and coastal flooding had
devastated local communities. That was also an issue shared in the wider Pacific region as
seen when the Federated States of Micronesia and Vanuatu suffered from the recent
hurricanes. While natural events had always occurred in small islands, it was irrefutable
that there were climate drivers and that the scale and intensity of their impact were
increasing.
17.
The Marshall Islands highlighted the fact that the Special Rapporteur on the
implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of
hazardous substances and wastes visited the Marshall Islands from 27 to 30 March 2012
and the United States from 24 to 27 April 2012 to assess the impact on human rights of the
Nuclear Testing Program conducted in the Marshall Islands by the United States from 1946
to 1958. One of the issues identified in his report was the limited access to information
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