84 GENDER PERSPECTIVES ON TORTURE: Law and Practice dignity-related rights, such as security of the person and integrity of the person, respec­ tively guaranteed under Articles 6 and 4 of the Charter. 157” Regarding State responsibility, the Commission offers applied the due diligence standard to the case in order to affirm Ethiopia´s responsibility in the present case: “it is to be recalled that a State incurs international responsibility for violation of rights and freedoms when it breaches its international law obligations with respect to the rights and freedoms in question (…) not because the act itself, but because of the lack of due diligence to prevent the violation or to respond to it (…) [Ethiopia] was aware or must be deemed to have been aware of the prevalence of marriage by abduction and rape and should have adopted and implemented protection measures.158” It finally declared that the State violated Article 5 of the Charter. This case sets, then, a very interesting legal precedent that confirms the responsibility of states to investigate and punished non-State actors violations of women and girls rights, specifically rape and abduction. Thus, it can be said that the due diligence principle of State responsibility for the acts and omis­ sions of non-state actors, specifically for failure to prevent, respond, investigate, prosecute, punish and provide effective/comprehensive reparations, in the case of sexual violations, is recognized by the ACHPR. Its scope needs, as in the other regional systems, still need to be clarified and broaden. Conclusion The prohibition of torture under international law has achieved peremptory norms (jus cogens) status. It has been set up as a rule under customary international law that States have to prevent and respond to acts of violence against women with due diligence. International jurisprudence of the universal human rights system, the Inter-American and European regional systems, and ICL and International Humanitarian Law (IHL) have all recog­ nized rape per se as a form of torture. A non-exhaustive overview of international and regional jurisprudence from the African, European and Inter-American systems shows an evolution in introducing a gender perspective in relation to cases of torture. However, in the case of private individuals, the jurisprudence hesitates: rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence have not been expressly recognized as torture yet. Most human rights systems qualify these acts as violations of the right to integrity and are starting to analyze, little by little, whether they can constitute torture. The lack of definition occurs, then, in cases of rape by non-state agents and when dealing with other forms of gender violence other than sexual violence. While the CAT considers that sexual violence perpetrated by public officials falls under Article 3 of the Convention prohibiting torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punish­ ment, the Committee has never answered the question as to whether the same acts perpetrated by a private party could amount to torture too. Meanwhile, the IACHR sanctions sexual violence car­ ried by public officials as acts of torture or ill treatment. Under the standard of due diligence artic­ ulated by the Court, States may incur responsibility under international human rights law where there is a failure to prevent or respond to certain acts or omissions of non-State actors. However, not even in the Cotton Field case, an emblematic case for women´s rights because it sets a strict due diligence principle in relation to violence against women, the Court decided to label the acts suf­ 157 158 Equality Now and EWLA v. Ethiopia, Op. Cit., para 120. Ibid. at para 122.