A/HRC/17/26 II. Multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and violence against women A. Background 12. For more than 25 years, the global movement against violence against women has worked to “transform significantly the place of women and the status of gender based violence within the human rights discourse.”2 In 1985, the United Nations Decade for Women culminated in the Third World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace in Nairobi, Kenya. This conference “reaffirm[ed] the international concern regarding the status of women and provide[d] a framework for renewed commitment by the international community to the advancement of women and the elimination of gender-based discrimination.”3 13. In 1993, the Vienna Conference on Human Rights adopted a declaration and a programme of action, which took into account both discrimination and violence against women. The Conference addressed specific human rights violations suffered by identifiable groups of individuals, including persons belonging to national, racial, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, indigenous peoples, women, children and persons with disabilities. It also recognized violence against women as a particular human rights violation which required the attention and resources of the United Nations. 14. Building on the Vienna Declaration and its framework, both the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995) and the Third World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban (2001) addressed the multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination that cause intra-gender and intra-racial inequalities respectively. The Fourth World Conference on Women recognized the particular vulnerability to violence of “women belonging to minority groups, indigenous women, refugee women, women migrants, including women migrant workers, women in poverty living in rural or remote communities, destitute women, women in institutions or in detention, female children, women with disabilities, elderly women, displaced women, repatriated women, women living in poverty and women in situations of armed conflict, foreign occupation, wars of aggression, civil wars, terrorism, including hostage-taking.”4 The World Conference against Racism included gender and racial discrimination among its five areas of focus. The Durban Declaration expressed the view “that racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance reveal themselves in a differentiated manner for women and girls, and can be among the factors leading to a deterioration in their living conditions, poverty, violence, multiple forms of discrimination, and the limitation or denial of their human rights.”5 15. In 1989, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women explicitly linked gender-based violence and discrimination against women in its general recommendation No. 12 and called on States parties to include in their reports information on violence and on measures introduced to deal with it. Between 1989 and 1992, the Committee issued a series of general recommendations that addressed some rights 2 3 4 5 6 Copelon, Rhonda, Recognizing the Egregious in the Everyday: Domestic Violence as Torture, 25 Columbia Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 291 (1994). A/CONF.116/28/Rev.1; See also A/RES/40/108. A/CONF.177/20 and A/CONF.177/20/Add.1. World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, Declaration (2001).