A/HRC/35/10 7. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has identified intersectionality as a basic concept for understanding the scope of the general obligations of State parties contained in article 2 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The concept of intersectionality captures the consequences of two or more combined systems of discrimination, and addresses the manner in which they contribute to create layers of inequality.2 In its general recommendation No. 28, the Committee called upon State parties to legally recognize such intersecting forms of discrimination and their compounded negative impact on the women concerned and prohibit them, and to adopt and pursue policies and programmes designed to eliminate such occurrences, including, where appropriate, temporary special measures in accordance with article 4, paragraph 1, of the Convention and general recommendation No. 25. 8. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination noted, in its general recommendation No. 25, the gender-related dimensions of racial discrimination and focused on the intersectionality of race and gender in its work. The Committee also framed sexual violence against women belonging to particular racial or ethnic groups in detention or during armed conflict, the coerced sterilization of indigenous women and the abuse of women workers in the informal sector or domestic workers employed abroad by their employers, and other types of abuse and violence targeting specific groups of women as a form of racial discrimination directed towards them because of their gender.3 9. In its general recommendation No. 30, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women found that, in conflict situations, specific groups of women and girls are at particular risk of violence, especially sexual violence, such as internally displaced and refugee women, and women of diverse caste, ethnic, national or religious identities, or other minorities, who are often attacked as symbolic representatives of their community, and that Stateless women and girls face heightened risks of abuse in times of conflict, including because many are undocumented and/or belong to ethnic, religious or linguistic minority populations. 10. With regard to women and girl refugees and asylum seekers, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, in its general recommendation No. 32, noted that gender-related claims to asylum may intersect with other proscribed grounds of discrimination, including race, ethnicity/nationality, religion, class, caste, and being lesbian, bisexual or transgender or other status, and requested States parties, in accordance with the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, to take proactive measures to ensure that the legally recognized grounds of persecution, including those enumerated in the Convention, were given a gender-sensitive interpretation. 11. In its general recommendation No. 34, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women also noted how rural women, and in particular indigenous and Afro-descendent women, often face intersecting discrimination based on their ethnicity, language and traditional way of life, and that women belonging to ethnic or religious minorities may also experience higher rates of poverty and other forms of social exclusion. 12. 2 3 The Committee further noted, in its general recommendation No. 24, that societal Report of the Expert Group Meeting on gender and racial discrimination, organized by the Division for the Advancement of Women, OHCHR and the United Nations Development Fund for Women, Zagreb, 21-24 November 2000. See also Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general recommendation No. 20. 3