ABSTRACT
The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination was the first international institutional body to respond to the calls with its adoption of General Recommendation No. 19 in 1992. General Recommendation No. 19 located violence against women squarely within the framework of inequality between women and men. It asserted that violence against women constitutes a form of sex-based discrimination under the definition of discrimination in the Women's Convention, article 1. Gender-based violence against women is defined as violence that is committed exclusively against women or which affects women disproportionately. The Human Rights Council's resolution on Accelerating efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women seeks to ensure that due attention is given to the issue in the Council's work, including the universal periodic review and special procedures. Especially influential has been the work of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, mandated first by the Com-mission on Human Rights and subsequently by the Human Rights Council.
