ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the extent to which there are positive obligations on states to criminalise, investigate, prosecute, and punish sexual exploitation and abuse under international human rights law. It explores the convention on the rights of the child and its optional protocol for state duties to investigate and prosecute sexual activity with children. Rape and sexual violence have been treated as torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment by a number of international human rights mechanisms, such as the Committee against torture, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the European Court of Human Rights. The due diligence standard would suggest that if a particular form of violence against women is criminalised in domestic law then it must be investigated, the violator prosecuted, and, if convicted, punished. On an expansive interpretation, the due diligence standard goes beyond what is expected in the Model Memorandum of Understanding between the United Nations and troop-contributing countries by requiring prosecution.
