A/HRC/7/6 page 23 2. Process indicators Access to justice and reporting 82. A key State obligation is to provide remedies28 and access to justice for victims of human rights violations. In article 4 (c) of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women States are called upon to exercise due diligence to investigate, prosecute and punish acts of violence against women. 83. Procedural justice addresses the ways justice systems operate: that rights can be realized (or denied) through formal processes. For instance, the right to dignity suggests women complaining about violence should be treated as human beings, to be believed and respected. Being treated with respect and empowered with knowledge about one’s rights and obligations restores some of the agency that violence has removed. Recent research in the United States of America29 found that bad practice has a greater impact than good, compounding the harms of victimization. The right to remedy must therefore include guarantees to protect victims’ rights at all steps of the judicial process. The principles of dignity, integrity, privacy and respect also need to be borne in mind with respect to reporting, with provisions for confidentiality and being able to make reports to female staff key basic measures. 84. The traditional discounting of violence against women has meant not only that State agencies have not recorded cases, but that women have not seen themselves as deserving of protection and redress. Reporting of violence to and by State institutions is crucial to ensuring justice for victims and the punishment of its perpetrators. Institutional data, therefore, tell us not about levels of violence, but levels of reporting and standards of recording. 85. Despite policies to increase reporting and prosecution of violence against women, outcomes are not always in the direction intended: in some jurisdictions, reporting has increased significantly, but there has been limited change in prosecution and/or conviction. These patterns have been noted with respect to intimate partner violence and rape/sexual assault, with in the latter case falling conviction rates in many developed countries.30 Attrition - the proportion of cases which fall out of the system before being decided by the court - offers a powerful indicator across a number of dimensions: the reporting rate shows whether women increasingly believe States are effective in addressing violence; the proportion of cases that are prosecuted and which result in convictions measures whether policy changes have had an impact. 28 See General Assembly resolution 60/147. 29 Campbell, R., et. al. (2001), Social reactions to rape victims: Healing and hurtful effects on psychological and physical health outcomes, Violence & Victims, 16: 287-302. 30 Kelly, L. & Regan, L. (2003), “Rape: Still a forgotten issue” available from www.rcne.com/downloads/RepsPubs/Attritn.pdf; and Kelly, L. & Regan L. (2001), Rape: The Forgotten Issue? A European Research and Networking Project, Child and Women Abuse Studies Unit, University of North London.