A/HRC/14/22 gender violence. To mainstream gender in their way of operating, they are holding thematic hearings devoted to female victims and ensuring that women’s experiences of the conflict are made visible in their reports and recommendations. 27. Moreover, the notion of gender-sensitive reparations has finally moved beyond the transitional justice discussions at State level and for the first time made an inroad into the international human rights jurisprudence. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has recently affirmed the need to craft gender-sensitive reparations in its groundbreaking decision against Mexico.8 28. Academic reflection and civil society activism have certainly contributed to placing the question of gender-sensitive reparations on the national and international agenda. In the last few years, the first monographic volumes addressing reparations for women have been seen.9 Furthermore, feminist transnational movements working on fighting impunity against gender violence in armed conflict are now leading the debate on women and reparations. The Nairobi Declaration on Women’s and Girls’ Right to a Remedy and Reparation adopted in 2007 by women’s rights advocates and activists and survivors of sexual violence in situations of conflict is the best expression of this transnational growing concern to provide women and girls with adequate reparations.10 Mobilization concerning reparations at the national level by victims’ groups, human rights groups and women’s associations has also increased. 29. The importance of women’s participation in reparations discussions and processes cannot be overestimated. Without the participation of women and girls from different contexts, initiatives are more likely to reflect men’s experience of violence and their concerns, priorities and needs regarding redress. Additionally, without such participation, an opportunity is missed for victims to gain a sense of agency that may in itself be an important form of rehabilitation, especially when victims come to perceive themselves as actors of social change. Finally, such participation is important for women and society in general to draw the links between past and present forms of violence and seize the opportunity provided by reparations discussions to press for more structural reforms. 3. Engendering reparations: the conceptual framework 30. As traditionally conceived, the remedy of reparation for the violation of a certain right required investigating certain facts to determine whether the violation had taken place; determining the harm ensuing from the violation; identifying responsibility for the violation; and determining measures of redress aimed at returning the victims to where they were before the violation took place. 31. With this scheme in mind and thinking about women as potential beneficiaries of reparations, the first hurdle relates to the fact that much of the violence that women and girls experience predates the conflict and only continues to aggravate the discrimination to 8 9 10 10 United Nations soft law instruments have also started to reflect the urgency of the matter. See Ruleof-Law Tools for Post-Conflict States on Reparations programmes (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.08.XIV.3). See Ruth Rubio-Marín (ed.), What Happened to the Women? Gender and Reparations for Human Rights Violations (New York, Social Science Research Council, 2006), and Ruth Rubio-Marín (ed.), The Gender of Reparations: Unsettling Sexual Hierarchies while Redressing Human Rights Violations (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009). Available from http://www.womensrightscoalition.org/site/reparation/signature_en.php. Also, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, several civil society actors adopted the Declaration of the Goma Forum on the Rights of Victims of Sexual Violence in December of 2009 asking the State to create an urgent reparations fund to face its co-responsibility together with perpetrators. GE.10-13109