A/HRC/26/38 Women, held in Mexico City and Copenhagen in 1975 and 1980 respectively, served as a catalyst for the adoption in 1985 of General Assembly resolution 40/36 on domestic violence. The Third World Conference on Women, held in Nairobi in 1985, and the Expert Group meeting on violence in the family, held in Vienna in 1986, further highlighted the global nature and concern regarding violence against women. In May 1991, the Economic and Social Council adopted resolution 1991/18 on violence against women in all its forms, in which it recommended the development of a framework for an international instrument that would explicitly address the issue of violence against women. The Council also urged Member States to adopt, strengthen and enforce legislation prohibiting violence against women and to take appropriate administrative, social and educational measures to protect women from all forms of physical and mental violence. 7. The United Nations explicitly recognized violence against women as a human rights violation at the World Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna in 1993. The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, adopted by the Conference, noted that “the human rights of women and of the girl-child are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights”.2 Emphasizing that the elimination of violence against women in all areas of life, both public and private, was central to the attainment of women’s human rights, the Conference called on governments and the United Nations to take the steps necessary for the realization of this goal, including by integrating the human rights of women “into the mainstream of United Nations system-wide activity”,3 through the activities of the treaty bodies and relevant mechanisms, including the promotion of how to make effective use of existing procedures, and the adoption of new procedures to “strengthen implementation of the commitment to women’s equality and the human rights of women.”4 Furthermore, in 1993, the General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (resolution 48/104), as recommended by the Economic and Social Council, and in 1994, the Commission on Human Rights adopted resolution 1994/45, establishing the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences. B. Commission on the Status of Women 8. Established in 1946,5 the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) has been instrumental in initiating and developing seminal normative frameworks on women’s human rights. Both the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women owe their existence to the work of the Commission. At its thirty-fifth session, in March 1991, CSW recommended that the Economic and Social Council develop a framework for an international instrument explicitly addressing violence against women, in consultation with the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The Economic and Social Council subsequently adopted resolution 1991/18, in which it recommended, inter alia, the development of a framework for an international instrument that would explicitly address violence against women. The Expert Group meeting on violence against women, convened by the Division for the Advancement of Women in Vienna in 1991, prepared the draft declaration on the elimination of violence against women for submission to CSW and CEDAW, and also discussed the elaboration and strengthening of CEDAW general recommendations, the appointment of a thematic 2 3 4 5 4 Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (A/CONF.157/23), part I, para. 18. Ibid., part II, para. 37. Ibid., part II, para. 40. See Economic and Social Council resolution 11 (II), 21 June 1946.