A/68/293 sanitation infrastructure are particularly crucial in this regard. In addition, States should increase construction of health care facilities and schools in underserved areas, as well as related infrastructure such as gender-segregated sanitation facilities. Where appropriate, village-level reforestation programmes and local rainwater harvesting schemes can also dramatically reduce the time women spend on water and fuel collection. 105. The development and distribution of affordable time and labour-saving and home-based technologies such as fuel-efficient stoves and grain mills is also crucial to reducing time spent on unpaid care in developing countries. Such technologies should be invested in and incentivized, guided by participatory needs assessments in disadvantaged communities, and costs should be subsidized to make them affordable for people living in poverty. E. Promoting empowerment of unpaid caregivers 106. In order to uphold their right to participation, tackle gender stereotypes and create an enabling environment for the more equal sharing of unpaid care work, States must take concerted action to meaningfully empower unpaid caregivers. 107. Care users, caregivers and other stakeholders should be proactively supported to participate in the design, implementation and monitoring of care services and other relevant policies. States and other relevant branches of Government must build the capacity of unpaid caregivers to participate in decision-making processes, including by providing them with accessible, up-todate information about their rights, and services and benefits available to them. Participatory mechanisms must be designed to be accessible to women living in poverty with unpaid care responsibilities, for example by providing on-site childcare at meetings. 108. Support, including financial support, should be given to the work of women’s organizations and men’s groups challenging the gender norms that allocate responsibility for care work to women and girls. VI. Recommendations for national human rights institutions 109. In order to position unpaid care work as a major human rights issue, build up evidence in this regard and alleviate women’s poverty resulting from unpaid care work across their life cycle, the Special Rapporteur urges national human rights institutions to include the issue of unpaid care work in their research, policy, advocacy and programming work and to apply a human rights and gender equality perspective to this work. In addition, she encourages them to raise the issue with human rights mechanisms and bodies, including the universal periodic review, human rights treaty bodies, and the Commission on the Status of Women, including when country reports are reviewed. 24/24 13-42271