32 The Bangkok Rules fact that a woman’s incarceration may – in itself – greatly diminish the likelihood of conception while detained is not a sufficient reason to withhold such medication.”53 Such provision should be available in all women’s prisons irrespective of security level, so that women do not have to be transferred to prisons with higher security levels than necessary in order to receive preventive healthcare services. Rule 19 Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guarantees all persons’ right to privacy. The Human Rights Committee, in its General Comment 16 on Article 17 stated that “[s]o far as personal and body search is concerned, effective measures should ensure that such searches are carried out in a manner consistent with the dignity of the person who is being searched. Persons being subjected to body search by State officials, or medical personnel acting at the request of the State, should only be examined by persons of the same sex” (see HRI/GEN/1/Rev.3, part I). This rule underlines that, in accordance with the Human Rights Committee, General Comment referred to above, male members of staff should never be involved in the personal searches of women prisoners including pat down and frisk searches. All searches of women should be carried out by women. The searches referred to in this rule, which should be carried out by women staff include visual strip searches, but different rules apply to invasive or body cavity searches in the case of both male and women prisoners, as explained below. A strip search refers to the removal or rearrangement of some or all of the clothing of a person so as to permit a visual inspection of a person’s private areas, namely genitals, buttocks, breasts or undergarments. This definition distinguishes strip searches from more intrusive body cavity searches, which involve a physical inspection of the detainee’s genital or anal regions. Where permitted at all, internal (body cavity) searches and strip searches should only be carried out if absolutely and legally necessary, and never on a routine basis. No prisoner – regardless of gender – should be humiliated or be required to strip completely during a search. Such searches can be carried out by exposing parts of the body only in turn to protect, to the extent possible, the dignity of the individual being searched. Special sensitivity should be demonstrated in the case of women, however, because they are likely to feel the humiliation of undergoing intimate searches particularly.54 The experience may be extremely distressing and traumatising if they have been victims of sexual abuse in the past. All searches, but strip searches and body cavity searches in particular, should be undertaken in accordance with pre-established procedures. ___________ CPT Standards, 2006 Edition, Extract from the 10th General Report [CPT/Inf (2000) 13], para. 33. See Human Rights Council, Seventh Session, Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Manfred Nowak, A/HRC/7/3, 15 January 2008, paragraph 35 and footnote 18, where reference is made to the broadening of the scope of crimes of sexual violence that can be prosecuted as rape. For instance, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights resorted to the international jurisprudence on rape to conclude that “the acts of sexual violence to which an inmate was submitted under an alleged finger vaginal ‘examination’ constituted sexual rape that due to its effects constituted torture.” See Miguel Castro-Castro Prison v. Peru, Inter-American Court of Human Rights judgement of 25 November 2006, para. 312. 53 54