4 GENDER PERSPECTIVES ON TORTURE: Law and Practice lence, sexual assault, trafficking, and other forms of gender-based violence. Participants include judges, prosecutors, law enforcement, advocates, social service providers, and other stakeholders. Tailored to each community it is held in, and in consultation with local experts, the Institute has the dual purpose of training participants while creating a network of criminal justice actors who are encouraged to continue working together after the training ends. This article describes the his­ tory and development of the model, details proper implementation methods, discusses the impact of these trainings, and posits the Institute Model as a solution for States to meet their due diligence obligations to end gender-based violence. The article draws upon experience and data that has been collected and analyzed on the success of the Institute Model. I. Introduction Global efforts to combat gender-based violence have grown exponentially in the last twenty years.1 With the growing understanding that women’s rights are human rights,2 the international community has started to analyze laws and policies with a gendered perspective, in the hope that doing so will ensure that these policies address the needs of victims.3 Although there has been a shift from systemic neglect of victims of gender-based violence to an acknowledgment of the need to eradicate gender-based violence on the part of some governments, the question of how to do so remains controversial. In response to a growing desire to eradicate gender-based violence, the international human rights law framework created State accountability for gender-based violence. State parties sought to develop standards surrounding gender-based violence in the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Along with this new treaty law, the inter­ national community began applying existing tools to address gender-based violence. One example of this is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture’s report on gender perspectives on tor­ ture where the then Special Rapporteur Juan Mendez defined gender-based violence as a form of torture under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment (CAT), a key instrument that encapsulates one of the most respected and established international legal standard.4 This characterization and the legal consequences it carries are fundamental, as they create States’ responsibility to approach the prevention and punishment of gender-based violence as they would all other types of torture. It thus emerges that States not only have an obligation to ensure that State actors are aware of the gravity of gender-based violence and how to address it, but also to protect people from the violence of private actors who commit gender-based violence. Thus emerges a due diligence obligation for States to address gender-based violence. This obliga­ tion requires States to prevent, protect against, prosecute, and punish acts of gender-based violence while providing adequate remedies to victims.5 See Statement by Dubravka Šimonović, Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences at the sixty session of the Commission on the Status of Women, New York, (14 March 2016), http://www.ohchr. org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=18524&LangID=E#sthash.rq6xaAlj.dpuf 2 See Hillary Rodham Clinton, Remarks to the U.N. 4th World Conference on Women Plenary Session: Women’s Rights Are Human Rights (1995) http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/hillaryclintonbeijingspeech.htm 3 See Šimonović, supra note 1. 4 See generally, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan E. Mendez, Report of the Special Rapporteur on Torture, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/31/57, (Jan 5, 2016). 5 See id. 1