A/HRC/47/26 (c) Providing recommendations on the criminalization and prosecution of rape, which, jointly with the model legislation on rape, are intended to serve as a harmonization tool for comparing and aligning national laws with international standards. II. International legal framework on rape A. Evolution of international human rights law 20. International human rights law has taken progressive steps in framing rape as a human rights violation through three main conceptual avenues: (a) as a specific form of genderbased violence against women and girls under the women’s anti-discrimination framework; (b) as torture under the torture framework; and (c) as other human rights violations, such as trafficking, sale of children, slavery, forced marriage and early and child marriage. Rape is a violation of a range of human rights, including the right to bodily integrity, the rights to autonomy and to sexual autonomy, the right to privacy, the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, women’s right to equality before the law and the rights to be free from violence, discrimination, torture and other cruel or inhuman treatment. 21. Rape, as a form of discrimination and gender-based violence against women, is specifically mentioned by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in its general recommendation No. 19 (1992) on violence against women, in which it refers to rape as a manifestation of violence against women in the family. 22. The Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, the first universal international instrument that provided a definition of violence against women, included “rape” and “marital rape” as forms of violence in its article 2. 23. The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, of 1993, established that eliminating violence against women was a human rights obligation of States, and that rape and sexual violence in armed conflict were violations of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian and human rights law. It thus questioned the traditional divide according to which international humanitarian law applied to violence in conflict and international human rights law to rape under regular circumstances. 24. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, of 1995, recognized rape as a manifestation of violence in the family and in the community, and the systematic practice of rape in conflict as a deliberate instrument of war, constituting a war crime. 25. At the regional level, the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women (Convention of Belém do Pará), of 1994, was the first international treaty on violence against women, identifying rape as a manifestation of such violence both in the family and in the community. 26. The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol), of 2003, specifically obligates States parties to enact legislation to criminalize violence against women. Under article 4 (2), States parties are required to enact and enforce laws to prohibit all forms of violence against women including unwanted or forced sex whether the violence takes place in private or public, and under article 14 (2) (c), States parties are obligated to protect women’s reproductive rights by authorizing medical abortion in cases of rape. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights adopted in 2017 its guidelines on combating sexual violence and its consequences in Africa. 27. The mandate of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences was established in 1994 and was the first human rights mechanism entrusted to focus solely on violence against women, its causes and consequences as a human rights violation.20 In the first report of the mandate holder to the Commission on Human Rights, in 1995, rape was identified as a manifestation of gender-based violence against women.21 The former Special Rapporteur saw consent as the legal dividing line between rape and sexual 20 21 Commission on Human Rights resolution 1994/45. E/CN.4/1995/42. 5