General Comment Provisions related to Reproductive Rights According to Paragraph 23, “States parties should provide a safe and supportive environment for adolescents that ensures the opportunity to participate in decisions affecting their health, to build life-skills, to acquire appropriate information, to receive counselling and to negotiate the health-behaviour choices they make. The realization of the right to health of adolescents is dependent on the development of youth-friendly health care, which respects confi dentiality and privacy and includes appropriate sexual and reproductive health services.” Paragraph 27 highlights states’ obligations with respect to ­indigenous peoples: “The Committee considers that indigenous peoples have the right to specifi c measures to improve their access to health services and care. These health services should be culturally appropriate, taking into account traditional preventive care, healing practices and medicines. States should provide resources for indigenous peoples to design, deliver and control such services so that they may enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.” Paragraph 35 deals with the obligation to protect: “States are also obliged to ensure that harmful social or traditional practices do not interfere with access to pre- and post-natal care and family-planning; to prevent third parties from coercing women to undergo traditional ­practices, e.g. female genital mutilation; and to take measures to protect all vulnerable or marginalized groups of society, in ­particular women, children, adolescents and older persons, in the light of ­gender-based expressions of violence. States should also ensure that third parties do not limit people’s access to health-related information and services.” 130