against Women was drafted by Carin Benninger-Budel, an expert on gender and human rights. This publication offers an updated edition by Helena Solà Martín, legal and human rights adviser at OMCT, and Carin Benninger-Budel detailing changes over the last eight years including new case law, General Comments, and Concluding Observations. It also takes account of the evolution of jurisprudence, for example in relation to the protection of women from violence, the scope of the obligation to investigate, and the modern concept of remedies and reparations, to mention only a few areas. We hope that this publication will be of practical help to lawyers, human rights defenders, and the members of the SOS-Torture network of the OMCT around the world. We thereby encourage them to contribute to closing the implementation gap and bringing us closer to the legal obligation that indeed ‘nothing can justify torture under any circumstances’. Gerald Staberock Secretary General February 2014 7