A/HRC/RES/44/16 ensuring child-friendly justice, the best interests of the child and the right to privacy at all stages of proceedings; (c) Establishing or strengthening mechanisms to enable safe reporting of cases that are likely to occur or have occurred and to provide referrals to needed services and accurate gender-sensitive and age-appropriate information about female genital mutilation; (d) Taking, within the general framework of integration policies and in consultation with affected communities, effective and specific targeted measures for refugee and migrant women and girls, their families and their communities in order to protect women and girls everywhere from female genital mutilation, including when the practice occurs outside the country of residence; (e) Assisting professional associations and trade unions of health service providers in adopting internal disciplinary rules prohibiting their members from engaging in the harmful practice of female genital mutilation; (f) Ensuring that national strategies and coordination mechanisms to prevent and eliminate female genital mutilation include transparent forms of monitoring, review and oversight of policies, programmes and budgets in order to improve the quality and responsiveness of prevention and response services; (g) Ensuring that adequate monitoring mechanisms are in place at the national and local levels to track progress in protecting women and children from harmful practices and in realizing their rights; (h) Developing the capacity of national human rights institutions to investigate human rights violations relating to the practice of female genital mutilation and to monitor progress in preventing and eliminating this harmful practice; (i) Systematizing the collection of data on female genital mutilation disaggregated by, inter alia, age, geographical location and ethnic and migrant status, encouraging research, particularly at the university level, transparency, accountability and data-sharing by relevant stakeholders and between countries, using the results of research to strengthen public information and awareness-raising activities, and measuring the effectiveness and impact of existing policies and programmes and the progress made in eliminating female genital mutilation; (j) Promoting, as appropriate, the free, active, informed and meaningful participation of civil society organizations and of women and girls at risk of or affected by female genital mutilation in social accountability mechanisms to monitor policies, programmes, budgets and services designed to prevent and eliminate female genital mutilation, as well as the effective implementation of public declarations of abandonment; (k) Taking all necessary measures to enable the equal participation of affected girls and of youth-led organizations, including, but not limited to, providing youth-friendly information on participation processes, making available financial resources to girls and youth-led organizations to cover costs related to their participation, and ensuring that their participation is not instrumentalized or deemed irrelevant by dominant entities within participatory processes; 11. Calls upon States to take a comprehensive, rights-based, gender-responsive and multisectoral approach in the prevention and response to female genital mutilation in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and to pay attention to the specific needs of women and girls, in particular those in vulnerable situations, in terms of, inter alia, accessibility and adequacy of information about the pandemic, the ability to maintain social distance, and access to testing and treatment as well as to essential health-care and other services, such as safe spaces, shelters and other social protection services, while ensuring that the front-line health and social workers assisting them have access to adequate means of protection from the virus; 12. Calls upon all States to engage in dialogue and to consult with States and other relevant stakeholders, including United Nations bodies, specialized agencies, funds and programmes, to prioritize female genital mutilation as a globally relevant issue and to increase their development cooperation efforts – technical and financial assistance, and 6