WUNRN
UNITED NATIONS - GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Gender-Specific Forms of Torture
A/55/290
11 August 2000
Transmitted by the UN
Secretary-General to the General Assembly on the Question of Torture and Other
Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, submitted by (then)
Special Rapporteur Sir Nigel Rodley.
II. A. Gender-Specific Forms of
Torture
5. The Special Rapporteur has continued to receive information
according to which women are subjected to gender-specific forms of torture,
including rape, sexual abuse and harassment, virginity testing, forced abortion
or forced marriage. A large number of individual cases have been transmitted, mostly
in conjunction with the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, to
several Governments during previous years...."
8. The Special Rapporteur
would like to recall that the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination
Against Women, in its General Recommendation No. 19, entitled "Violence
Against Women" (See A/47/38), enumerated the right not to be subjected to
torture or to curel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment among those
rights impaired or nullified by gender-based violence under international law
and constituting discrimination within the meaning of the Convention. It stated
that the definition in Artilce 1 of the Convention should be interpreted as
encompassing gender-based violence, that is, violence that is directed against a
woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately. It
includes acts that inflict physical, mental or sexual harm or suffering,
threats of such acts, coercion and other deprivations of liberty...."
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