Equality Now responded to the CRPD Committee’s call for submissions on the draft guidelines on addressing multiple and intersectional discrimination against women and girls with disabilities

Equality Now calls on the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 

to ensure that its guidelines provide clear direction to States on preventing and responding to sexual violence against women and girls with disabilities. 

• It also urges States to guarantee accessible, multi-channel reporting mechanisms and support services, including shelters, legal aid, psychosocial support, and communication accommodations tailored to different disabilities, as well as reasonable and procedural accommodations throughout all stages of proceedings. 
• On legal reform, the submission calls for consent-based definitions of rape and for judicial and investigative authorities to adopt a contextual approach to consent that takes account of coercion, dependency, power imbalances, institutionalisation, and communication barriers, rather than focusing on a survivor’s supposed “helplessness.” 
• It further urges the abolition of guardianship regimes that strip women and girls with disabilities of legal capacity, the replacement of those systems with supported decision-making frameworks, and the adoption of measures to phase out institutionalisation while ensuring effective oversight, monitoring, and remedies for abuse in institutional settings. 
• The submission also recommends that States establish coordinated systems to collect, analyse, and publish comprehensive data on sexual and other forms of gender-based violence against women and girls with disabilities, disaggregated at least by age, sex, and disability, including through annual justice-chain attrition reports. It further calls for the participation of organisations of women with disabilities in the design and monitoring of these systems, alongside safeguards for confidentiality and data security.