Author Description

Violence against women remains one of the most pervasive human rights violations in the world today, and it permeates every society, at every level. Such violence is considered a systemic, widespread and pervasive human rights violation, experienced largely by women because they are women. Yet at the international level, there is a gap in the legal protection of women from violence. There is currently no binding international convention that explicitly prohibits such violence; or calls for its elimination; or, mandates the criminalisation of all forms of violence against women.The book puts forward a strong case that there is a legal gap in international law for the protection of women and girls from violence and that this could be remedied through a new United Nations Convention or alternatively an Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women.