A/HRC/14/22 applicant against her ex-husband’s violent and abusive behaviour and a violation of the prohibition of discrimination. 81. In Opuz v. Turkey, the Court awarded the applicant non-pecuniary damages for the anguish and distress suffered on account of the killing of her mother and the authorities’ failure to undertake sufficient measures to prevent the domestic violence perpetrated by her husband and to give him deterrent punishment. It also awarded costs and expenses for the proceedings before the court, less the amount received by way of legal aid from the Council of Europe. The weaknesses in relation to reparations include: the Court’s dismissal of the claim of pecuniary damages which was based on the deprivation of economic support from her mother; the failure to treat the applicant as her mother’s successor; the failure to compensate the applicant for material harm ensuing from the violation of her right not to be subject to inhuman or degrading treatment by her husband; and the non-recognition of other forms of reparation and the lack of guarantees of non-repetition and forward-looking recommendations. By not linking the reforms required to avoid the broad problem of impunity with the concept of reparation, the Court missed the opportunity to suggest a broader agenda to deal with the structural problem of domestic violence. Because the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers plays a crucial role guaranteeing the implementation of the judgments and, as such, is the body mandated to address structural problems (such as impunity or lack of effective investigations) in member States of the Council of Europe, it too can play an essential role in ensuring adequate reparations. D. Conclusion and recommendations 82. This report shows how the legal bases for a right to a remedy have been increasingly recognized in the corpus of international human rights and humanitarian instruments. Although among victims of violence, women have been especially neglected, the report examines significant substantive and procedural trends to reverse this, both in the discussion and in the practice of reparations, at national and international levels. 83. Reparation measures should not concentrate on the fairly limited and traditionally conceived catalogue of violations of civil and political rights, but instead should include the worst forms of crimes or violations targeting women and girls. It must additionally be acknowledged that the same violations may entail different harms for men and women, but also for women and girls and women from specific groups, and that violations may be perpetrated with the complicity of non-State actors. 84. The limits of ordinary and extraordinary judicial proceedings to achieve the full and comprehensive realization of women’s right to reparations are also examined in the report. Against this backdrop, it is argued that gender-responsive administrative reparations schemes can obviate some of the difficulties and costs associated with litigation. The administrative arena also enables a more proactive approach to the involvement of a larger group of people, including victims, at all levels — from conceptualization of reparation schemes, to reaching victims, to understanding the structural component of the violations — including the share of State responsibility by either action or omission, and the gender-specific impact of the violence on women’s and girls’ lives. 85. Reparations for women cannot be just about returning them to the situation in which they were found before the individual instance of violence, but instead should strive to have a transformative potential. This implies that reparations should aspire, to the extent possible, to subvert instead of reinforce pre-existing patterns of crosscutting structural subordination, gender hierarchies, systemic marginalization and GE.10-13109 21

Select target paragraph3

Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents