A/HRC/17/30 women, which required ensuring their protection from sexual harassment in the workplace in a case where the local officials failed to investigate the gang rape of a social worker campaigning against child marriage. The Court also drew on general recommendation 19 of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women to formulate a set of guidelines on sexual harassment to bind private and public employers pending the introduction of suitable legislation. 67. Regarding violence against women as a gender-based form of discrimination, in Opuz v. Turkey,46 the European Court of Human Rights, drawing on the work of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and views adopted by the Committee in several petitions relating to domestic violence, decided for the first time that gender-based violence is a form of discrimination under the European Convention on Human Rights. In Prosecutor v. Kunarac,47 the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, drawing on comparative law, expert analysis and advice contained in reports of the Special Rapporteur on torture as well as the former Commission on Human Rights, concluded that rape and other forms of sexual assault against women held in detention were a particularly ignominious violation of the inherent dignity and right to physical integrity of the human being, and that accordingly they constituted an act of torture. 68. The Special Rapporteur applauds all these, and many other decisions in which national and regional courts and tribunals have drawn on human rights standards and the contributions made by the international human rights mechanisms to uphold respect for women’s human rights over recent decades. She further encourages information-sharing on case law across jurisdictions, countries and regions and invites international organizations to support efforts by Governments, High Courts, civil society, women's organizations and other stakeholders to make available to the judiciaries and the general public case-law decisions which advance women's protection worldwide. V. Good practices 69. The Special Rapporteur wishes to stress the importance of increasing efforts to exchange information on the ways and means in which stakeholders, including Governments, civil society organizations, international and regional organizations, the private sector and others, are seeking to uphold their commitment to the realization of gender equality in the administration of justice, and the protection of women’s human rights in the judicial system. In her view, information-sharing is an essential tool to help States to fill in policy and protection gaps at all levels. 70. The Special Rapporteur wishes to draw attention to the important role of women's associations, which contribute to the exercise of women's right of association, and are instrumental actors in gender mainstreaming, capacity-building efforts and know-how exchange. She commends information-sharing efforts by civil society and women's associations, particularly concerning the worldwide gender justice observatory48 and the Jurisprudence of Equality Programme Decisions49 and encourages know-how exchange among women judges and lawyers from a diversity of legal and judicial systems. 46 47 48 49 14 European Court of Human Rights, Opuz v. Turkey, judgement of 9 June 2009. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Prosecutor v. Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovac and Zoran Vukovic, judgement of 12 June 2002. Gender justice observatory. Available from: http://www.womenslinkworldwide.org/observatory/# Jurisprudence of Equality Program Decisions. Available from: http://www.iawj.org/jep/jep.asp