Everyday Rape: International Human Rights Law and Violence against Women in Peacetime

In 1993, the Vienna Declaration emerging out of the World Conference on Human Rights declared that: ‘gender-based violence and all forms of sexual harassment and exploitation, including those resulting from cultural prejudice and international trafficking, are incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person, and must be eliminated.’ Slow to be put officially on the international human rights agenda, rape and sexual violence against women are now taken up as issues of international concern by a range of UN bodies, including the UN human rights treaty bodies. As there remains no explicit internationally agreed treaty outlawing either act, they have been given international recognition by the UN human rights treaty bodies by re-interpreting and extending existing provisions. The provisions most regularly applied include equality rights and the absolute prohibition against torture. In this article, I examine how these concepts - equality and non-discrimination on the basis of sex as well as the prohibition against torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment - have been interpreted and applied to rape and sexual violence against women by relevant UN human rights treaty bodies. In particular, I consider whether this approach has worked to fill this obvious gender gap in international human rights law, what it means for women victims, and what else ought to be done.