A/HRC/17/26 women’s ability to enjoy universal human rights.17 These institutions and structures often promote access for a privileged group of women at the expense of those who are less privileged. 55. The problematic nature of human rights discourse regarding violence, which has until recently regarded violence mostly as public violence perpetrated by or condoned by the State, and which often carries with it the elements of spectacle, has led to the marginalization and invisibility of violence perpetrated against women in the private sphere. It is not the more everyday ordinary violence that takes place within ostensibly private spaces, which many have until now thought to be beyond the control and regulation of the State, which receives attention. A holistic approach will require the challenging of discourses that make certain human rights violations invisible. 56. A holistic approach to addressing the relationship between inequality and violence against women allows for the matching of local level responses that best address the particular needs related to violence in their specific contexts. One example would be literacy programmes for rural women. In many contexts, rural women and also recent immigrants have lower literacy rates than their urban counterparts and citizens of the country. Therefore, a way to eliminate one form of intra-gender inequality is to improve access to literacy programmes and educational opportunities. Such programmes can also lead to women accessing other programmes and resources to address violence against them. 57. The fundamental premise is that fully addressing and working to end all forms of violence against women requires a holistic approach to defining the problem, identifying needs and legislating change. Such an approach is crucial to the provision of effective remedies and to lessening the incidence of gender-based violence, by identifying where forms of discrimination intersect with violence against women, and also the various forms of stratification that contextualize the societal beliefs that allow abuse to occur. 58. Research demonstrates the utility of an approach that accounts for additional aspects of personhood, such as nationality, disability, indigenous belonging, sexual orientation, and socio-economic class, to predetermine the likelihood and extent to which women will experience multiple forms and various levels of violence. In adopting a more comprehensive approach, a picture of the different ways in which intersectional and multiple forms of discrimination operate in the context of violence against women emerges. It reflects the type of systematic, comprehensive, multisectoral and sustained approach needed to develop national strategies, concrete programmes and actions aimed at eliminating all forms of violence against women.18 1. Human rights as universal, interdependent and indivisible 59. Human rights are universal in the sense that everyone is entitled to have their rights respected, protected and fulfilled no matter who they are or where they reside. Universality renders geographic location and social position impermissible bases on which to deny human rights, including the right to be free from violence. The “gendered theorization of human rights,” incorporates “an intersectional approach to race, class, gender, sexuality and nation” where “no one right can be easily broken down into a singular issue, as rights are 17 18 14 A/HRC/11/6/Add.5. A/RES/65/187