A/HRC/11/6 page 14 40. It is important to note here that global restructuring has increased the role of corporate power and that of international institutions relative to State power over macroeconomic processes. This calls for expanding the concept of affirmative obligation to include these non-State actors.27 C. Economic and social rights 41. The impact of globalization and women’s ability to benefit from its opportunities while avoiding its risks is undermined by gender inequality, unequal entitlement structures, economic insecurities of global capitalism, as well as weakening State capacity for regulation and distributional justice. Poor women who are systematically denied access to ES rights are particularly at risk of greater hardship and abuse. 42. This section aims to establish the linkages between VAW and women’s ES rights, including the right to adequate housing, property, inheritance, food, water, education, health, and the right to decent work and social security. These rights are recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and guaranteed by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. 1. Right to adequate housing 43. The right to adequate housing includes not only security of tenure but also access to public services, and participation in the physical, social, legal and economic environments. Lack of adequate housing can trigger VAW and vice versa.28 Those especially at risk of violence due to a lack of access to alternative housing include internally displaced (IDP) and refugee women, domestic workers, poor single mothers, and women victims of violence living in countries without safe shelters or affordable long term housing for abused women. 44. Deprivation of housing is closely linked to violent and forced displacement, as in civil strife situations. The risk of violence is particularly acute for IDP and refugee women and girls who live in camps that lack privacy and may be forced to live in the same quarters or in close proximity to male strangers, which increases their vulnerability. Sexual violence has been documented as a serious problem in such environments. Once the conflict has ended women who 27 See Clapham, Andrew, Human Rights Obligations of Non-State Actors (Collected Courses of the Academy of European Law), New York: Oxford University Press, March 2006 (http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.co.uk/pdf/0-19-829815-3.pdf). 28 Proceedings, Asia-Pacific Regional Consultation on “The Inter-linkages between Violence against Women and Women’s Right to Adequate Housing”, held in cooperation with the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context, New Delhi, India, October, 2003: pp. 37 and 54 (available at http://www.hic-sarp.org/interlinkages_VAW&RAH.pdf).

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