A/71/304 support a holistic and comprehensive approach to tacking inequalities and discrimination. 24 49. Legal empowerment projects that work with marginalized communities help to secure access to health care. They also respond to and seek to remedy human rights violations, including violations of the right to health. Strengthening legal literacy and legal aid services can also be instrumental in relatio n to the underlying determinants of health, such as obtaining housing and social welfare benefits (Goal 1 and target 11.1); preventing unlawful or excessive detention and addressing police violence or abuse (Goals 11 and 16); protecting or establishing lan d rights (Goals 1, 5 and 11); establishing identity and citizenship (target 16.9); preventing gender-based discrimination (Goals 5 and 16); and promoting the meaningful involvement of poor and other marginalized people in decisions affecting their access to health care and underlying determinants of health (targets 5.5 and 16.7). Participation and empowerment 50. Poor and marginalized populations are often excluded from meaningful participation in decisions about policies that directly affect their hea lth and development. This exacerbates exclusion, discrimination and inequality, and in turn, poor health. Without the participation of communities, particularly the poor and vulnerable, health priorities and systems will continue to favour urban, able -bodied and privileged populations. Regrettably, Goal 3 fails to incorporate participation as an indicator for measuring health progress. 51. Participation of a diverse cross section of civil society, especially user groups, affected communities and grass-roots activists, is essential to ensuring implementation of a global agenda that is inclusive and meaningful for all. The right to health requires that participation be active and meaningful and thus move beyond tokenistic modes of representation. This requires resource mobilization and establishing various mechanisms for civil society to engage with national, regional and international Sustainable Development Goal processes, including the high -level political forum on sustainable development (Goal 17). 52. Community empowerment initiatives working with poor and marginalized communities have achieved extraordinary health outcomes, for example in the global fight to end HIV/AIDS (target 3.3) (E/HLPF/2016/2, para. 107). Economic and social empowerment, such as the decriminalization of sex work and sex worker mobilization, have improved health and identified critical health gaps (Goals 3 and 5). 25 Community mobilization to attain adequate and stable housing for homeless people living with HIV can have life-saving implications for their health (targets 3.3 and 11.1). 26 Efforts to empower parents in vulnerable situations through participatory parental education initiatives reduce the risk of negative health outcomes for their children (Goal 3 and targets 4.2, 5.2 and 16.2). 27 When young __________________ 24 25 26 27 16-13597 Eric A. Friedman, “National health equity strategies to implement the global promise of SDGs”, Health and Human Rights Journal, SDG Series blog, 5 October 2016. Available from www.hhrjournal.org/2015/ 10/sdg-series-national-health-equity-strategies-to-implement-the-global-promise-of-sdgs. Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, “How AIDS changed everything: MDG 6-15 years, 15 lessons of hope from the AIDS response” (Geneva, 2015). Kate Shannon and others, “Global epidemiology of HIV among female sex workers: influence of structural determinants”, The Lancet, Vol. 385, No. 9962 (January 2015). Amy Knowlton and others, “Individual, interpersonal and structural correlates of effective HAART use among urban active injection drug users”, Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, vol. 41, No. 4 (April 2006). 13/26