A/HRC/22/72 discriminatory access to an array of rights, including, but not exclusively, to education, information, health care and justice stifles rural women’s capacity to feed themselves and their families in dignity. 48. Registration of girls in schools is only a first step to ensuring gender equality in access to education. Several factors undermine the quality of education of girl children in rural areas. First, the withdrawal of girls from school is an adjustment method to economic or environmental shocks in the absence of other resources to alleviate the coping process. Second, schools in rural areas in certain regions are unsafe, unhygienic or lack sanitation facilities altogether. This favours dropout, in particular that of adolescent girls.57 Third, the early marriage of girls confines their perspectives to the traditional role of women and limits their access to education.58 Fourth, classes maintain the traditional roles assigned to girls and women.59 The United Nations report on the progress made in achieving the Millennium Development Goals points out that very slow progress has been made to overcome the challenges in the axis poverty-malnutrition-limited access to education.60 49. Education is strongly connected to the capacity to access information. Illiteracy disempowers rural women in a variety of areas and forms. For instance, the consequence of illiteracy for rural women is lack of access to credit facilities and employment and meagre participation in decision-making processes.61 Rural women’s limited access to education and information has also negatively impacted on their capacity to organize.62 Although rural residents may be able to organize within a village, distances, lack of infrastructure or the costs of transport as well as the social norms informing relationships among villages contribute to difficulties in organizing across villages. 63 For this reason, the provision of Convention on the Elimination All Forms of Discrimination against Women regarding the organization of women’s self-groups and cooperatives is one of the essential factors to achieve the empowerment of rural women. 50. In the absence of adequate health-care facilities in rural areas, both rural women and men face restrictions in terms of access to health care. Their mobility is often hampered by lack of physical or economic access to transport. Women have a need, however, for family planning and childbirth assistance and, in this context, lack of access represents a greater burden. With difficulties to access health workers, rural women rely on traditional knowledge and medicinal plants together with native food varieties and practices for their sustenance and health care.64 At times, this may have harmful effects on their health condition and that of their children. For example, a report of UN-Women indicates that in rural villages in Cambodia, women diagnosed with HIV know very little about the treatment and have difficulties in accessing information about their rights. Discrimination from the local communities further isolates these women. As many women are infected by their husbands, they become widows or have to care for a sick spouse while unwell themselves.65 Access to adequate nutrition is essential for pregnant and breastfeeding mothers living with HIV. Yet, HIV treatment may require up to half of a household’s annual income, leaving numerous families in poverty. 66 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 UNICEF, Water, Environment and Sanitation, http://www.unicef.org/india/wes.html. UN-Women, note 25 above, p. 11. CEDAW, Concluding Observations, Uzbekistan (CEDAW/C/UZB/CO/4), 2010, para 31. UN Millennium Development Goals Report, 2011. CEDAW, concluding observations, Togo (CEDAW/C/TGO/CO/6-7), 2012, para. 36. Submission by Colombia, 7 May 2012. M. R. Vargas, L.R. Pruitt, note 32 above, p. 279. CSW Report, para. 10. UN-Women, Building Skills, Finding Voices : HIV-Positive Women in Cambodia, 5 April 2012. Submission by Caritas Internationalis, not dated. 13