A/HRC/11/6 page 2 Summary This is my third thematic report to the Human Rights Council in my capacity as the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, submitted pursuant to Human Rights Council decision 1/102, and resolution 7/24. Chapter I highlights my activities in 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, and Chapter II addresses the political economy of women’s human rights. The current political economic order, too often neglected in the analyses of women’s human rights, profoundly affects both the prevalence of violence against women and efforts to eliminate it. Women’s physical security and freedom from violence are inextricably linked to the material basis of relationships that govern the distribution and use of resources and entitlements, as well as authority within the home, the community and the transnational realm. Cultural rationales for limiting or negating women’s rights are thus, grounded in particular economic interests and power dynamics. Preventing violence against women and ensuring gender equality in a neoliberal global environment requires a holistic approach to women’s human rights beyond the current dichotomized treatment of rights into civil and political on the one hand, and economic and social on the other. Unless women’s agency is recognized and their capabilities supported through social, economic and political empowerment the human rights they are promised will remain abstract concepts. This report identifies how the economic and social rights inherent in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are directly linked to women’s socio-economic security and their capacity to assert their will and resist violence. Nowhere in the world do women share equal social and economic rights or equal access to productive resources. The neoliberal policy environment and the proliferation of armed conflicts, often caused by struggles to control power and productive resources, have set back women’s access to such resources and increased their exposure to violence. Conflicts, as well as post-conflict and post humanitarian crisis situations, often build on prevailing gender, class, and ethnic inequalities - deepening some and/or creating new ones in the process; thus reconfiguring entitlement structures, which rarely benefit women. Yet, although globalization, conflicts and the current economic recession hold new risks for women and challenges for human rights protection, they also offer new opportunities for taming globalization and patriarchy. Particularly the unprecedented entry of women into paid employment with global restructuring has created new contradictions with the potential to rupture the long-standing structures of inequalities that perpetuate women’s subordination. The report concludes with recommendations to Governments and non-State actors on ways to enhance women’s enjoyment of the full range of their rights; as a key strategy for the prevention, the protection and prosecution of violence against women. To this end, the report calls for gender-aware/competent governance and joint international responsibility for the integration of initiatives to end violence against women in the context of the larger struggle for social and economic equality within the human rights movement.