A/HRC/26/38 Rapporteur, a 15-year review of the mandate was conducted. The review22 provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of the functioning of the mandate from 1994 to 2009. As stated in the review, in addition to the issues covered in the thematic reports, the mandate has dealt with several other issues that have been subsumed in the annual reports, country mission reports and communications to governments, including issues relating to health rights, including sexual and reproductive rights; women refugees and asylum seekers; national institutional mechanisms; as well as various aspects of implementation challenges. The mandate holders over that period highlighted in their reports that, despite advances in the creation of tools to enable and enhance compliance, lack of compliance and implementation continues to pose a serious challenge. 52. The annual thematic reports produced between 1994 and 2003 were closely aligned to conceptual developments of the objectives set in the resolution by which the mandate was established. Those reports focused on different manifestations of violence, its causes and consequences, including violence in the family; in the community; perpetrated or condoned by the State, including in times of armed conflict; and violence in the transnational arena. The reports expanded the scope of the mandate to consider the intersection and continuum of violence in the private and public spheres, with a particular focus on race, ethnicity, culture, migration, trafficking and economic empowerment. The mandate holders highlighted how traditional law and order approaches to violence, coupled with ineffective and discriminatory policing and gender-biased court and sentencing processes, prevent women from accessing justice and obtaining effective redress. 53. The first Special Rapporteur recommended that States criminalize and prosecute all manifestations of violence against women, including violence perpetrated under the guise of cultural practices,23 and called for greater State responsibility for the protection of trafficked women and the prevention of forced or coerced migration.24 She also called for a more expansive approach that sees violence against women as a “health, legal, economic, developmental and human rights problem”,25 examined the issue of legal protections and remedies for violence against women perpetrated in situations of armed conflict;26 and called for the inclusion of gendered provisions and processes in the International Criminal Court.27 In her final report, in January 2003, the first Special Rapporteur stated that the greatest achievements during her mandate had been in “awareness-raising and standardsetting”,28 including with regard to the limitations of the criminal justice framework, and setting new standards for addressing violence as a product of social, political and economic inequality. However, she acknowledged that, despite these successes, very little had changed in the lives of most women during her tenure.29 54. In her first report in 2004 (E/CN.4/2004/66), the second Special Rapporteur articulated the main objectives of her tenure as ensuring effective protection of women’s rights and equal access to justice for women; monitoring the effectiveness of strategies to end violence against women; and ensuring that accountability mechanisms are accessible to women seeking redress. In addition to focusing on the issue of the intersectionality of violence against women and HIV/AIDS in 2005, the Special Rapporteur conducted further 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 14 “15 years of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences (1994-2009): a critical review” (A/HRC/11/6/Add.5). E/CN.4/2002/83. E/CN.4/2000/68. E/CN.4/1996/53, para. 132. E/CN.4/2001/73. E/CN.4/1998/54. E/CN.4/2003/75, para. 71. Ibid., para. 77.

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