A/HRC/26/38 diligence to eliminate violence against women. State responsibility to act with due diligence entails, inter alia, responding effectively to violence, ensuring gender equality frameworks, promoting attitudinal change, proactively ensuring women’s participation in decisionmaking and undertaking programmes with a strong focus on promoting women’s empowerment and agency. 4. Lack of transformative remedies which address the root causes of violence against women, including individual, institutional and structural aspects 65. Transformative remedies require that the problem of violence against women is acknowledged as systemic and not individual; and that this requires specific measures to address it as a gender-specific human rights violation. In her 2011 report, the Special Rapporteur articulated a gender-specific and holistic framework, including protection, prevention and empowerment approaches. Responses in laws, policies and programmes require that the historical, current and future realities of the lives of women be taken into account through a lens of indivisibility and interdependency of rights. Compromising the resources available to women’s groups for service provision and advocacy, including through the prioritizing of men’s groups, undermines transformative change efforts. 66. A more recent challenge is the creation of hierarchies of violence against women, especially through political and funding actions. This is particularly evident in the articulation of sexual violence in conflict situations as being different and exceptional, as opposed to it being a continuation of a pattern of discrimination and violence that is exacerbated in times of conflict — as reflected in recent armed conflict situations. The prioritizing of this manifestation of violence has led to numerous concerns, including a shift away from an understanding of violence against women as both gendered and as part of a continuum of violence; a shift in resources, in some instances, despite the need to address all manifestations of violence, including at the national level; a shift in focus by some United Nations entities; and the effect of donor-driven priorities in this process. The views of many women’s rights defenders is that these shifts have led to “privileging” the manifestation of violence against women in conflict situations, to the detriment and ignoring of the low-level “warfare” that women and girls experience in their homes and communities on a daily basis. 5. Financial crisis, austerity measures and cuts in social services spending 67. The Special Rapporteur is deeply concerned about the weakening of the women’s rights sector due to funding cuts for core service provision, including legal, policy and advocacy work. Cuts in funding to NGOs, as a form of reprisal against the work of women human rights defenders, is also of concern. This issue has been raised in numerous reports of treaty bodies and NGOs. 6. Lack of a legally binding instrument 68. The Special Rapporteur has highlighted that a normative gap exists at the international level. The lack of a legally binding instrument on violence against women precludes the articulation of the issue as a human rights violation in and of itself, comprehensively addressing all forms of violence against women and clearly stating the obligations of States to act with due diligence to eliminate violence against women. There are many “soft law” documents that address the issue, including the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and general comments and recommendations of treaty bodies. However, although soft laws may be influential in developing norms, their non-binding nature effectively means that States cannot be held responsible for violations. 18