A/HRC/43/48 6. States seeking to confront these challenges have adopted a variety of approaches to uphold their obligation to ensure the freedom to manifest religion or belief, while simultaneously protecting the rights to equality and non-discrimination of all people. Some States have taken important measures aimed at creating conditions in which all members of society are able to exercise their rights on equal footing. Other States have made less effort, instead aligning official laws and policies with religious actors. The Special Rapporteur has also identified situations in which States have restricted gender-discriminatory practices but have done so in such a way as to render the very individuals on whose behalf they purported to act unable to fully enjoy their right to manifest their freedom of religion or belief, alone or in community with others. 7. Of particular concern is the considerable evidence that, in all regions of the world, actors citing religious justifications for their actions have advocated to Governments and to the broader public for the preservation or imposition of laws and policies that directly or indirectly discriminate against women, girls and LGBT+ persons. In every region of the world, the Special Rapporteur has identified laws enacted with the aim of mandating standards of conduct purportedly demanded by a particular religion that effectively deny women and other individuals the right to equality and non-discrimination on the basis of their sex, sexual orientation or gender identity. Furthermore, laws identified as intended to protect the right of all individuals to manifest their religion or belief have been applied in a manner that has resulted in discrimination in practice on the same bases. Governments in all regions of the world have also failed to uphold their obligation to protect people from gender-based violence and discrimination perpetrated against them by private individuals or entities claiming a religious justification for their actions and to sanction the perpetrators of such acts. Gender-based violence and discrimination are being perpetuated both in the public sphere and by and within religious communities and entities. 8. In its resolution 6/37, the Human Rights Council directed the Special Rapporteur to apply a gender perspective in carrying out his work, and to continue to do so, inter alia, through the identification of gender-specific abuses, including in information collection and in recommendations. Accordingly, several of the Special Rapporteur’s predecessors devoted attention to the issue of gender-specific human rights abuses with a relationship to the exercise of religious or other beliefs (A/68/290, para. 22). In the present report, attention is drawn to different situations in which gender-based violence and discrimination grounded in religious justifications persist, whether as a direct result of official laws and policies or carried out by private actors with explicit or tacit encouragement from State officials. The Special Rapporteur discusses the legal standards that should inform States’ responses to these issues and identifies initiatives to ensure that the exercise of the right to manifest religion or belief does not impede the enjoyment of the rights to equality and non-discrimination, and makes recommendations. III. Methodology 9. In the present report, the Special Rapporteur identifies a number of situations recently addressed by United Nations human rights experts in which laws enacted with reference to religious beliefs or private actors citing religious “justifications” for their actions have given rise to gender-based violence or discrimination. 10. The Special Rapporteur also gathered information for the present report directly from survivors of human rights violations resulting from the implementation of laws or perpetrated by private actors as described above, and from rights monitors, advocates, academics, legal experts, faith-based actors, and government officials working and living in 42 countries, including 11 countries in the Americas, 11 countries in South and South-East Asia, 19 countries in Africa and a single country in Eastern Europe. The information was gathered during two-to-three day consultations that were held from May to December 2019 in Buenos Aires, Warsaw, Johannesburg, Colombo, Geneva, Bangkok, Tunis, New York and Montevideo. 11. Participants in these meetings also included members of United Nations treaty bodies and special procedure mandate holders, representatives from the Office of the United Nations 3