IV • Guaranteeing the rights of minority women and girls 92. Minority women often lack health care and medical treatment owing to economic, social, political and geographical barriers. Minority women may be denied proper health or medical services, fear the consequences of asking for medical assistance, receive improper or low-quality care or live in places where no health services are available. Governments should ensure that health services are suitable as far as possible and accessible to mobile households and to the reality of the different minority groups present in their territory. Practices such as employing female minority health mediators to work closely with minority communities and to help build bridges between minority women and health and social services providers should be considered. 93. The activities of health-care providers, including hospitals, should prevent discriminatory practices against minority women such as the refusal of treatment, isolation in separate wards or conducting medical interventions without their consent. 94. Governments, in collaboration with national human rights institutions and minority and women’s rights organizations, should seek to ensure fully the cultural rights of minority women, including through the promotion of intercultural and interreligious dialogue and cooperation at all levels, especially at the local and grass-roots levels. 2. National human rights institutions 3. Civil society 96. Civil society actors should consider dedicated initiatives that focus on issues such as promoting minority women’s access to training and skills, employment, financial services, social security and land tenure and property rights. 97. Civil-society actors’ efforts should be focused on identifying the particular needs of minority women and drawing the attention of relevant Government departments and bodies to them in order to address challenges and discrimination faced by minority women that contribute to poverty and gender inequality in their communities. Particular attention should also be paid to the monitoring of resources allocated to initiatives to build the capacity of minority women and to supporting the role of minority women in participatory budgeting processes at the local level. Efforts should be made to ensure that resources are used to the best effect in reaching the most marginalized minority women. Compilation of Recommendations of the First Four Sessions 2008 to 2011 63 WOMEN AND GIRLS 95. National human rights institutions should study impediments and recommend legislative and policy reforms and assist in developing programmes to guarantee the implementation of non-discrimination legislation with regard to such areas as minority women’s access to education and training, employment, labour rights, social security, financial services and land and property rights.

Select target paragraph3