14 GENDER PERSPECTIVES ON TORTURE: Law and Practice bined with a gender-sensitive approach can lead to higher reporting rates, allowing for greater accountability.46 V. How the Justice Institute Could Help States Move Toward Fulfilling Their Due Diligence Obligations Developing a holistic and systemic process that ensures the protection, prosecution, punishment, provision of reparations for victims, and prevention of gender-based violence requires a State to take a thorough and intentional approach. States must develop laws and systems to address gen­ der-based violence, and these laws and systems must be utilized fully and properly. To utilize the systems that States put in place, State actors must understand the nature of gender-based violence and the resources available to combat it. The Justice Institute provides a State with the ability to develop these capacities, helping law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, social workers, advocates, and other important stakeholders with the ability to train with highly-skilled and experienced instructors and peers who have the common goal of combatting gender-based violence in their communities. Protection. A means of secondary prevention, protection aims to stop the re-occurrence of gen­ der-based violence. Perpetrators must be stopped from violating victims repeatedly, a cycle that not only re-victimizes the individual victim, but also creates a culture of impunity for perpetra­ tors of gender-based violence. Access to medical and counseling services is one way of providing protection to victims, as these measures sometimes offer victims options to change their circum­ stances and avoid re-victimization.47 This protection, however, is ineffective if individuals provid­ ing resources are untrained. Trainings that allow government social service providers to effectively support victims are essential to fulfilling the protection prong of due diligence. All trainings, however, are not sufficient to create effective support for victims. Without highly-skilled and experienced trainers, for example, some trainings fail to establish credibility amongst participants, and therefore to establish long term or substantial changes. The methodology of the Justice Institute Model addresses the gaps that many trainings fail to address. By teaching partici­ pants about the specific laws that victims of gender-based violence can utilize while also address­ ing attitudinal and cultural biases, the Justice Institute allows for all levels of State actors to provide sustained and effective support and protection to victims. Training government actors also ensures that the protection provided by a State is accessible to victims. It is not enough that States pass laws or create services. In order to fulfill the due diligence standard to protect, these laws and services must be accessible—impossible if law enforcement, prosecutors, judges and other actors lack knowledge or carry misunderstandings or biases.48 Prosecution. The investigation and prosecution of gender-based violence is required for States to meet its due diligence obligation. This helps increase victim’s trust in systems with the hopes that they will report the violence they have experienced. Investigations must be prompt and impar­ 46 See generally, Lenahan (Gonzales) et. al v. United States, Case 12.626, Inter-Am. Comm’n H.R., Report No. 80/11, OEA/Ser.L./V/II.98, doc. 7 rev. (2011). 47 Other modes of providing protection to victims of gender-based violence is through the provision of shelters, hotlines, programs leading to housing and financial independence 48 Lenahan (Gonzales) et. al v. United States, Case 12.626, Inter-Am. Comm’n H.R., Report No. 80/11, OEA/ Ser.L./V/II.98, doc. 7 rev. ¶ 122-6 (2011).