PART I.  SETTING THE BOUNDARIES FOR THE USE OF FORCE IN LAW ENFORCEMENT WOMEN IN LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES Law enforcement agencies should recruit sufficient numbers of women to ensure fair community representation and facilitate the protection of the rights of female suspects, arrestees and detainees. They should not discriminate against women in recruitment, hiring, training, assignment, promotion, salary, or other career and administrative matters and may establish temporary special measures that allow equal participation and consider women’s needs and conditions. There should be a regular review of recruitment, hiring, training and promotion policies to tackle any existing gender bias. Female law enforcement officers should also be protected against gender-based and sexual violence, which is not a rare occurrence.a The internal disciplinary, oversight and accountability mechanisms should be prepared to deal with such cases. a See CHRI, Rough Roads to Equality: Women Police in South Asia, 2015, at: http://humanrightsinitiative.org/tenders/ CHRI_Women%20Police%20in%20South%20Asia_2015.pdf. Also see Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences (A/HRC/26/38/Add.1), 1 April 2014. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons (LGBT) The United Nations and other human rights mechanisms have documented how LGBT people are, in many contexts, particularly at risk of arbitrary detention, violence, torture and ill-treatment, including from law enforcement officials.81 In many countries, members of LGBT communities also find themselves harassed by law enforcement officials, sometimes in order to extort money or sex from them or otherwise blackmail them. When detained, LGBT persons are particularly at risk of becoming victims of sexual violence, other torture and other forms of ill-treatment, by fellow detainees and by or with the complicity of law enforcement officials. The right to non-discrimination of LGBT law enforcement officials should also be ensured within law enforcement agencies. United Nations mechanisms have condemned the persistence of impunity for such violations and abuses and highlighted shortcomings including ineffective police action, failure to register cases, lack of investigation, loss of documents, inappropriate classification of acts and investigations guided by stereotypes and prejudices, and police abuse of LGBT victims of crimes when they attempt to report acts of violence. In order for law enforcement officials to effectively respect and protect the human rights of members of LGBT communities, their agencies need to adopt antidiscrimination and anti-harassment policies, ensure that allegations of violations against LGBT people are promptly and thoroughly investigated and perpetrators held accountable, and provide mandatory training to officials to raise their awareness and combat biases and prejudices.82 81  See for example OHCHR, Discrimination and violence against individuals based on their sexual orientation and gender identity (A/HRC/29/23), sections IV-V. 82  See OHCHR, Living Free and Equal – Ending violence and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex persons: practices, gaps and challenges, 2016 (in particular chapter 6.4 regarding the training of law enforcement officials and chapter 10); as well as OHCHR, Human Rights and Law Enforcement, A Manual on Human Rights Training for Law Enforcement Officials, 2017, chapter 13 (Law Enforcement, Human Rights and Gender). 31