A/HRC/44/46/Add.1 Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law. They indicate the need to take appropriate legislative and administrative and other appropriate measures to prevent violations (para. 3 (a)). The Special Rapporteur considers the Government’s endeavour to raise awareness about Hansen’s disease among schoolchildren to be a good practice in the field of prevention. However, during the visit, she realized that the ways in which the awareness-raising guidelines provided by the Government were being implemented differed at the local level, depending on the interests of both private companies that produce school materials and local government administration. 43. The Special Rapporteur therefore recommends that both the private sector and local governments give priority to Hansen’s disease in their human rights programmes and that the central Government place additional emphasis on this important strategy. Furthermore, the Special Rapporteur considers that the Government is not making sufficient use of the impressive fountainhead of artistic production by the individuals isolated in the sanatoriums as a way of guaranteeing their continuity of life (curtailed by the sterilization policy) and of providing the public with a positive image of their capabilities, work and humanity. Further research, accompanied by wide dissemination of the artistic production of persons affected by Hansen’s disease, should also be part of the reparation schemes as an effective means to bring about systemic change in the way society regards Hansen’s disease and to eliminate harmful stereotypes. 44. Fifthly, the ideal behind a reparation programme is to distribute a set of benefits in such a way as to turn every victim into a beneficiary (A/69/518, para. 23). While compensation should be provided to all victims under the same category of violations rather than through individual calculations of the harm each person suffered, the categorization of violations should be as broad as possible in order to include everyone who suffered a gross violation and the different effects it had. Reparation should also be proportional to the harm suffered. During her visit, the Special Rapporteur heard reports of family members who, while not having lived with the relative affected by Hansen’s disease, had suffered from the same pattern of discrimination as those who did, and yet were excluded from the reparation scheme. She also heard testimonies from family members of persons affected by Hansen’s disease whose childhood development and opportunities for education and work had been devastated, and who did not consider the amount of the compensation received to be sufficient to remedy the economic damage they had endured. Furthermore, the Special Rapporteur heard from persons who had undergone forced sterilization, who indicated that there had not been sufficient acknowledgement from the State with regard to what was a permanent violation owing to its enduring effects. Some of them therefore continue to demand more substantive compensation, even though their pleas have been denied in the courts on the grounds of the statute of limitation in Japan.23 The Special Rapporteur also observed with concern the complete absence of any reference to gender both in grass-roots organizations and in the Government reparation programmes and related policies. 45. The first gap, which relates to not ensuring due recognition of all the victims, and the second and third gaps, which relate to a probable lack of proportionality of the compensation provided to the harm suffered, all have significant effects on individuals’ lives at the micro level. By contrast, the fourth gap reflects deep-rooted norms and values that undermine the participation of women in public affairs, and thus has far-reaching consequences on the macro objectives of any reparation programme, which, as indicated above, aims at building a just and egalitarian society. Gender-neutral reparation programmes that fail to acknowledge the distinctive impact of harm on women and to provide adequate remedies for women jeopardize the linkage between reparation and the building of more inclusive and equitable societies.24 The extremely limited representation of women in the organizations of persons affected by Hansen’s disease cannot be explained by epidemiology. Rather, it reflects the inexistence of an empowering environment that favours the full involvement of women in decision-making processes. The absence of a 23 24 12 Committee against Torture, general comment No. 3; and WHO, Eliminating forced, coercive and otherwise involuntary sterilization: an interagency statement, OHCHR, UN-Women, UNAIDS, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, WHO (2014.) Ruth Rubio-Marin, ed., The Gender of Reparations: Unsettling Sexual Hierarchies while Redressing Human Rights Violations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).