CAT/C/PER/CO/5-6 Violence against women 14. The Committee is concerned at reports on widespread violence against women and girls, including domestic and sexual violence and femicide, and at the low numbers of investigations and prosecutions in such cases, as well as the lack of statistics on sexual violence. While taking note of the adoption of the Second National Action Plan to Combat Violence Against Women 2009-2015, the Committee is concerned that domestic violence and forms of sexual violence and harassment, other than the crime of rape, are not defined as offences in the Criminal Code and at the obstacles victims of violence face when accessing justice, combined with the insufficient number of shelters available to them (arts. 2, 12, 13 and 16). The State party should intensify its efforts and urgently ensure the implementation of effective protective measures to prevent and combat all forms of violence against women and girls and amend its legislation to include domestic violence and forms of sexual violence as offences under the Criminal Code, as is the case with rape, and develop a better overview on the prevalence of the offence. The State should further strengthen all efforts to prevent violence against women, enhance the access of victims to justice, ensure that all acts of violence are promptly, effectively and impartially investigated and prosecuted, perpetrators brought to justice and victims provided with redress. The State party should set up not only an effective complaints mechanism for women and girls but also a monitoring mechanism to prevent all forms of violence against them. The Ministry of Health should provide specialized training to health personnel dealing with victims of violence and a single, consolidated system for keeping records on cases of violence against women should be established. Broad awareness-raising campaigns should be initiated and training on combating and preventing violence against women and girls for law enforcement officers, judges, lawyers, and social workers should be provided. Reproductive rights and health 15. The Committee is seriously concerned that illegal abortions are one of the main causes of high maternal mortality in the State party and that the interpretation of therapeutic and legal abortion in cases of medical necessity is too restrictive and lacks clarity, leading women to seek unsafe illegal abortions. The Committee is particularly concerned at the criminalization of abortions in cases of rape and incest as well as the prohibition by the Constitutional Court of the distribution of oral emergency contraception to victims of rape. It is further concerned at the fact that the existing law obliges physicians to bring information on women resorting to post-abortion health services to the attention of the authorities and which may lead to investigation and criminal prosecution, which creates such fear of punishment that, in practice, this constitutes a denial of legal abortion services. The Committee is also concerned at the forced sterilization of women, namely the 2.000 women who were subjected to forced sterilizations under the National Reproductive Health and Family Planning Program between 1996 and 2000, and who have not yet received redress (arts. 2, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16). The State party should review its legislation with a view to: (a) Amending the general prohibition for cases of therapeutic abortion and pregnancy resulting from rape and incest and provide free health coverage in cases of rape; (b) Legalizing the distribution of oral emergency contraception to victims of rape; 5