A/HRC/21/39
82.
States should:
(a)
Take multidimensional measures to tackle the relationship between ill health
and poverty, recognizing the many and varied determinants of health and the agency and
autonomy of persons living in poverty;
(b)
Enhance the accessibility and quality of preventive and curative health care
for persons living in poverty, including sexual and reproductive health care and mental
health care;
(c)
Ensure that persons living in poverty have access to safe and affordable
medicines and that inability to pay does not prevent access to essential health care and
medicine;
(d)
Establish health-care facilities within the safe physical reach of communities
living in poverty, including in rural areas and slums, and ensure that such facilities have all
resources necessary for their proper functioning;
(e)
Take special measures to target the main health conditions affecting persons
living in poverty, including neglected diseases. This should include free immunization,
educational programmes and training for health practitioners to identify and treat such
illnesses;
(f)
Implement specific and well-resourced policies to tackle gender-based
violence, including accessible preventive and treatment services that protect the dignity and
privacy of persons living in poverty;
(g)
Provide tailor-made services for groups whose access to health services may
raise particular challenges, such as language, geographical barriers, cultural barriers, age,
discrimination or existing health status. Women living in poverty should have access to
high-quality sexual and reproductive health services and information.
K.
Right to work and rights at work
83.
In rural and urban areas alike, persons living in poverty experience unemployment,
underemployment, unreliable casual labour, low wages and unsafe and degrading working
conditions. Persons living in poverty tend to work outside the formal economy and without
social security benefits, such as maternity leave, sick leave, pensions and disability benefits.
They may spend most of their waking hours at the workplace, barely surviving on their
earnings and facing exploitation including bonded or forced labour, arbitrary dismissal and
abuse. Women are particularly at risk of abuse, as are groups affected by discrimination
such as persons with disabilities and undocumented migrants. Women usually take on the
bulk of unpaid care work in their households, making them more likely to engage in low
paid and insecure employment, or preventing them from entering the labour market
altogether.
84.
States should:
(a)
Adopt rigorous labour regulations and ensure their enforcement through a
labour inspectorate with adequate capacity and resources to ensure enjoyment of the right to
decent working conditions;
(b)
Ensure that all workers are paid a wage sufficient to enable them and their
family to have access to an adequate standard of living;
(c)
Ensure that legal standards regarding just and favourable conditions of work
are extended to and respected in the informal economy, and collect disaggregated data
assessing the dimensions of informal work;
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