Human Rights Standards on Harmful Practices

Harmful practices are violations of the rights of women and girls that are deeply rooted in gender discrimination. They take many forms, including child and forced marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM), which have an especially significant impact on the enjoyment of sexual and reproductive health.

Harmful practices constitute a form of gender-based violence and may amount to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. They often involve violence and cause physical or psychological harm or suffering, including through ...

Harmful practices are violations of the rights of women and girls that are deeply rooted in gender discrimination. They take many forms, including child and forced marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM), which have an especially significant impact on the enjoyment of sexual and reproductive health.

Harmful practices constitute a form of gender-based violence and may amount to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. They often involve violence and cause physical or psychological harm or suffering, including through immediate or long-term consequences for the survivor’s dignity, physical, psychosocial and moral integrity and development, participation, health, education, and socioeconomic status. The UN Committee against Torture has repeatedly said that practices such as FGM violate the physical integrity and human dignity of girls and women. Many harmful practices place women’s and adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) at great risk.

A core element of harmful practices is that they are imposed by family members, community members, or society at large, regardless of whether the victim provides, or is able to provide, full, free, and informed consent. These practices are deeply rooted in discrimination, including on the basis of sex, gender, and age. A human rights-based approach recognizes that they stem from societal attitudes and gender stereotypes that regard women and girls to be “irrational” or “weak” and that assign more power, value, and voice to men.

Despite progress in reducing certain harmful practices through targeted efforts, growing populations mean that a larger number of women and girls than ever before are anticipated to face these practices in the coming decades. People facing intersecting forms of discrimination, including women and girls with disabilities and women and girls in rural areas, are at particular risk of experiencing harmful practices. Situations of crisis, including conflicts and other humanitarian emergencies, can increase the incidence of some harmful practices, including child, early, and forced marriage (CEFM) and FGM. UN agencies estimate that the COVID-19 pandemic may result in two million cases of FGM and ten million child marriages that would otherwise have been averted.

Human rights treaties include both general and specific obligations to address harmful practices. States must eliminate practices that discriminate against women or are prejudicial to the health of children.

A human rights-based approach to harmful practices recognizes that state responses to end such practices should actively seek to transform the discriminatory gender stereotypes at their root, and to ensure respect for bodily autonomy and integrity. Addressing power imbalances and dynamics—including sexism, racism, adultism, classism, ableism, and heterosexism—and empowering women and girls and other oppressed groups are critical to the effectiveness of efforts to address harmful practices. For example, anti-FGM efforts focusing solely on physical harms, rather than implications for bodily autonomy, may inadvertently lead to the medicalization of the practice rather than its eradication. Similarly, initiatives aimed at ending child marriage that address only the legal need to set a minimum age – but do not provide access to opportunities, agency, and services for girls – may be insufficient to put an end to the practice and may lead to unintended consequences, such as increases in informal unions or unregistered marriages.