Gender-based Violence and International Protection of Human Rights

It was as recently as 1992 that a UN Committee (the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women) asserted that gender-based violence against women was a form of discrimination and a human rights violation and not just a private matter in which the State should not interfere. Since then, a number of instruments and mechanisms have been developed within the UN Human Rights System as well as in regional human rights' protection systems to address such violence and, in recent years, to also include protection of other persons affected by gender-based violence, in particular, the LGBTIQ+ community.

For this purpose, the historic evolution that led to frame gender-based violence as a human rights violation and analyze the existing instruments and tools available at the international level (both UN and regional) to ensure that states adequately address gender-based violence against women and LGBTIQ+ individuals will be reviewed.

The course will focus on international binding instruments, including international conventions (both, general and specifically addressing gender-based violence) and jurisprudence from international courts, as well as non-binding instruments such as recommendations from specialized bodies and organs at the UN and regional levels. It will examine the existing mechanisms and procedures available at the regional and international levels for individual complaints or communications as well as for reports of wider situations of gender-based violence, and the developments to address gender-based violence in International Criminal Law, including the evolution in jurisprudence towards framing gender-based crimes as international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.