A/HRC/17/26 E. Conclusions and recommendations 99. The holistic approach to understanding the relationship between discrimination and violence against women draws upon a well-established foundation of human rights treaties and declarations passed by various bodies of the United Nations during four decades of transnational cooperation. The United Nations treaties and declarations provide the institutional framework within which Governments, nonstate actors, and local activists can promote a holistic response to identifying, preventing, and ultimately ending, all forms of violence against women. Efforts to date have been well intentioned but have produced limited success, largely as a result of a silo approach to addressing violence against women. 100. This report shows the usefulness of a holistic approach in addressing the interconnections between violence against women, its causes and consequences; and multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination. A holistic approach underscores the interdependence and indivisibility of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights; it situates violence against women on a continuum; it acknowledges the structural aspects and factors of discrimination, which includes structural and institutional inequalities; and it analyzes social and/or economic hierarchies between women and men and also among women. 101. A holistic approach demonstrates that programmatic responses to violence against women cannot be considered in isolation from the context of individuals, households, communities or States. In meeting their international legal obligations, States must bear in mind that discrimination affects women in different ways depending on how they are positioned within the social, economic and cultural hierarchies that prohibit or further compromise certain women’s ability to enjoy universal human rights. This approach also reveals critical aspects of intra-gender discrimination and inequality, which up until now have been invisible in efforts to treat all women homogenously in the responses to violence. 102. A holistic approach demonstrates how interpersonal and structural forms of violence are related, reproduced, and generated; and also that violence exists on a continuum. Efforts to end all forms of violence against women must consider not only how individual lives are affected by the immediate impact of abuse, but how structures of discrimination and inequality perpetuate and exacerbate a victim’s experience. 103. In pursuing a holistic approach to understanding discrimination and violence against women, it is imperative to include an analysis of the right to an adequate standard of living and also a focus on, inter alia, bodily integrity rights, education, civil and political engagement and individual self-determination. These fundamentals directly affect a woman’s ability to equitably and holistically participate in public and private spaces. 104. Situating violence against women as a problem that cuts across political, civil, economic, social and cultural rights compels us to recognize the universality of violence. This report argues that individual women’s productive and reproductive activities in all sectors is impacted by forms of interpersonal and structural violence which intersect with various factors such as immigration, trade and economic policy, social and economic development, civil and political development, sexual orientation, ability, legal protection, conflict, security concerns, and so on. 105. Utilizing a holistic approach improves the ability of policymakers, non-state actors and others to see the interconnections between multiple forms of discrimination and the generation of different forms of violence against women. Efforts to end all 21