A/HRC/25/19 3. Gender equality and women’s rights 18. OHCHR worked with partners to promote the implementation of recommendations contained in the report of my Office on creating and/or strengthening synergies against violence against women.3 In July, I signed a letter of agreement with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) to systematize collaboration in advancing women’s rights and gender equality. 19. In collaboration with UN-Women and the United Nations Development Programme, OHCHR developed a global programme to ensure women’s access to justice through comprehensive and coordinated law and justice reforms at the national level. OHCHR, together with UN-Women, convened three validation workshops on the model protocol for the investigation of femicide in Latin America, which aimed at increasing the integration of gender aspects throughout such investigations. As one of the lead entities of the Team of Experts on the Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict,4 OHCHR conducted assessment missions to the Central African Republic, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia, and made recommendations to the relevant Governments on strengthening their legal and institutional frameworks to respond to conflict-related sexual violence. 20. In follow-up to Human Rights Council resolution 23/25, in October, OHCHR convened a lessons learned meeting of commissions of inquiry and fact-finding mission staff and experts on the investigation of sexual and gender-based violence. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Joint Human Rights Office supported mobile courts dealing with cases of sexual violence and provided through joint investigation teams military prosecutors with technical support to investigate allegations of sexual violence, and other serious violations, in remote areas of the country. Furthermore, the Joint Human Rights Office supported the establishment of legal clinics to provide free legal advice to victims of sexual violence. 21. OHCHR supported efforts in Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Sierra Leone to enhance national capacity to address sexual and gender-based violence. In Guinea-Bissau, advocacy by the human rights component of the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Guinea-Bissau (UNIOGBIS) contributed to the adoption in July of laws to combat female genital mutilation and to prevent human trafficking. 22. In partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, OHCHR promoted the implementation of a technical guidance on a rights-based approach to the reduction of maternal mortality and morbidity, including by building capacity in Malawi, South Africa, Uganda and the United Republic of Tanzania. In July, together with UNFPA and the Government of the Netherlands, OHCHR co-organized an international conference on human rights in the context of the review of the International Conference on Population and Development: beyond 2014, in which participants urged that human rights be placed at the centre of efforts to deliver on implementation of the agenda of the International Conference. 23. OHCHR published jointly with UN-Women a handbook entitled “Realizing women’s rights to land and other productive resources”. 3 4 6 A/HRC/23/25. See Security Council resolution 1888 (2009).