A/HRC/14/22 Guarantees of non-repetition 62. Guarantees of non-repetition offer the greatest potential for transforming gender relations. In promising to ensure non-recurrence, such guarantees trigger a discussion about the underlying structural causes of the violence and their gendered manifestations and a discussion about the broader institutional or legal reforms that might be called for to ensure non-repetition. A gender-sensitive reparations programme should seize this opportunity to advance, as part of the venture of constructing a new and more inclusive democratic order, a society that overcomes the systemic subordination of women. 63. In the aftermath of violent conflict, when “normalcy” is restored, women are subject to new and sometimes higher levels of violence from men whom they know in the family and the community. Internalization of violent mechanisms of conflict resolution, accumulated and unresolved feelings of male impotence and frustration, male anxiety around the empowerment of women who have become politically visible during the conflict or simply the increased vulnerability of women may be some of the reasons that make women the targets of rising levels of violence after official peace or democracy has been declared. Reparations programmes that take place at one given point in time and inevitably look to the past have inherent limitations to address future violations. However, the type of guarantees of non-repetition can ground practical obligations on the part of the State to take into account the foreseeable short- and medium-term legacies of its violent past for women and, more specifically, adopt measures to avoid the exploitation of new forms of vulnerability. 64. Guarantees of non-repetition, if duly implemented, have the potential to detect the enabling conditions and long-term legacies of gender violence, and can therefore be a suitable platform for broader structural reforms for all women, not just victims, and hence for the construction of a more inclusive and gender-just political order. Furthermore, guarantees of non-repetition can help victims in the rehabilitation process, especially when they are involved and consulted in the process of formulating those guarantees. Women and collective reparations 65. Recently, the notion that reparations benefits can be distributed to collectivities has garnered interest and support. Both the Basic Principles and Guidelines and the updated set of principles for the protection and promotion of human rights through action to combat impunity12 endorse the idea of collective reparations. However, the term “collective reparations” is ambiguous; “collective” is both used to qualify the “reparations”, i.e., the types of goods distributed or the mode of distributing them, and the “subject” who receives them, namely, collectivities, including ethnic or racial groups who might have been particularly targeted. Despite an increased interest in exploring collective forms of reparation, virtually no discussion is taking place on how this interest may intersect with interest in doing justice to women through reparations programmes. 66. A form of collective harm that deserves particular attention is group-based harm as a result of group-based affiliation. Collective measures of redress may be thought of as particularly apposite to address the legacy of violence on the identity or status of groups such as indigenous peoples. Women or children, however, are rarely thought of in collective terms, even though gender-specific and age-specific forms of violence happen to women and children precisely because they are women and children. Women and girls should not be rendered invisible under the notion of the collective and should be consulted at all stages of discussions. 12 GE.10-13109 E/CN.4/2005/102/Add.1. 17