A/HRC/17/26 violations experienced at the intersection of inter- and intra-gender sex discrimination and violence against women. In 1992 it issued general recommendation No. 19 both to define gender-based violence and to make it discrimination on the grounds of sex within the meaning of the Convention. Much of what is set forth in general recommendation No. 19 is reiterated and refined in the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women. CEDAW has also addressed the impact of intersecting forms of discrimination against women and its nexus with gender-based violence. Most recently, in general recommendation No. 27, which deals with the rights of older women, it recognizes that age and sex make older women vulnerable to violence, and that age, sex and disability make older women with disabilities particularly vulnerable. 16. The above-mentioned developments have been relied on by the Security Council, the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council to pass resolutions that focus particular attention on violence against women and girls. For example, both the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council have identified inter-gender inequality and discrimination, including gender-based violence, as violating the human rights of women and girls. Over time, the language of these resolutions has evolved to reflect the heightened risk of gender-based violence to women suffering intersectional discrimination. As analyzed within the United Nations human rights framework, “power imbalances and structural inequality between men and women are among the root causes of violence against women.”6 This makes violence against women a matter of inter-gender inequality between women and men. In addition, various resolutions have acknowledged that discrimination is understood as having multiple forms that combine to heighten the vulnerability of some women and girls to violence. This reflects an understanding that discrimination and violence against women is also a matter of intra-gender inequality among women. 17. The United Nations discourse regarding violence against women hinges on three principles: first, violence against women and girls is addressed as a matter of equality and non-discrimination between women and men; second, multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination are recognized as increasing the risk that some women will experience targeted, compounded or structural discrimination; and third, the interdependence of human rights is reflected in efforts such as those that seek to address the causes of violence against women related to the civil, cultural, economic, political and social spheres. 18. Despite such developments, the global discourse on women’s human rights has been largely restricted to a framework of equality and non-discrimination against women versus men, i.e. an inter-gender focus, which is based on the male norm around which many major human rights instruments remain organized. Consequently important challenges remain in analyzing both non-discrimination and equality as implicating intra-gender differences among women. 19. Violence violates the equality and non-discrimination rights of women and girls in ways that are contingent on women’s material conditions, individual attributes and social locations. A holistic approach for the elimination of all forms of violence against all women therefore requires systematic discrimination and marginalization to be addressed. 20. This report argues that the elimination of violence requires holistic measures that address both inter-gender and intra-gender inequality and discrimination. The holistic approach requires rights to be treated as universal, interdependent and indivisible; situating violence on a continuum that spans interpersonal and structural violence; accounting for both individual and structural discrimination, including structural and institutional 6 A/HRC/14/L.9/Rev.1 7