Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault in the United States: A Human Rights Based Approach & Practice Guide

This Guide provides an overview of human rights law’s approach to addressing gender-based violence. Section I distills the core human rights principles related to gender-based violence, focusing on the “due diligence” standard: a comprehensive framework to address human rights violations in a systemic and proactive manner, whether committed by private or governmental actors. Section II discusses the value added of human rights principles in the U.S. context, and identifies concrete ways to integrate core human rights principles into domestic policy. Section III describes seminal international law cases related to gender-based violence. Section IV concludes by offering several resources on human rights and gender- based violence, including U.S. government and NGO reports and recommendations related to eradicating gender-based violence, reviews of other countries’ approaches to these issues and a list of U.S.-based NGOs working on gender-based violence as a human rights issue. The Appendix is a chart of the key provisions of international and regional human rights agreements that relate to gender-based violence.