| United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay on Monday stressed the need to eliminate gender discrimination.
Speaking at the annual session of the Executive Committee of the United Nations refugee agency in Geneva, Ms Pillay said eliminating discrimination is a duty of the highest order.
The grounds of discrimination, she added, are manifold and multifaceted and its impact on the lives of many has been and will continue to be the source of forced displacement.
She said gender discrimination makes human rights pledges and norms empty promises for millions of women and girls.
"No effort should be spared to persuade countries to repeal laws and practices that continue to reduce women and girls to second class citizens. Harmful traditional practices, including genital mutilation, discriminatory customs such as forced marriages and outright attacks continue to be factors that make women flee conditions of unbearable hardship."
Ms. Pillay said this occurs despite international standards and the specific commitments that have been made to throw out these laws and customs and to bring perpetrators of violence, including sexual attacks to justice.
Ms. Navi Pillay stressed that a crucial step to redress such inequity is the ratification and mplementation of key human rights instruments as well as the removal of reservations to these standards entered by numerous states.
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