Jackie Jones, Jeanne Sarson, and Linda MacDonald 35 (DEVAW) (General Assembly, 1993) and in the Committee against Torture’s General Comment No. 3 (2012b). The Canadian Government’s position that the Committee against Torture should not address cases where women are subjected to non-State torture raises, from a grass-roots feminist human rights perspective, and attached to an evolving international human rights legal framework, the following basic questions: 1. Should women who suffer acts of gender-based violence that amounts to torture perpe­ trated by non-State actors have that violence named or be recognized as a human rights crime under international and national law? 2. Should women be equal before the law and entitled, without discrimination, to equal protection under the law to not be subjected to torture, irrespective of whether the tor­ turer is a non-State or State actor? 3. Should women have the equal human right to bring complaints of torture inflicted by non-State actors before the Committee against Torture, as do those who have suffered acts of torture inflicted by the State? Canada’s Non-Compliance with Torture Committee Recommendations The response by the Canadian Government delegation was shocking to the two Canadian authors in attendance at this session. They knew, just as Committee expert Ms. Belmir noted, that Canada’s past was as “a leading defender of human rights” (Committee against Torture, 2012a, para. 30). In 1994, a Canada-led resolution resulted in the appointment of a United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women; in 2008, another Canada-led resolution renewed this posi­ tion and helped Canada eliminate ongoing violence against women and children (D. L. Emerson, letter dated September 24, 2008). Additionally, during the Vienna World Conference in the early 90s, Canada was involved in formulating the following sentence, which was eventually adopted on the fourth draft proposal: “The human rights of women are an inalienable, integral, and indivis­ ible part of universal human rights” (Bauer as cited in Gaer, 1998, p. 32). The Committee experts countered Canada’s dismissive position. Committee expert, Ms. Gaer, expressed her disappointment in Canada’s statement that “violence against women would be better addressed elsewhere.” She explained that “during the first 12 years of the Committee’s existence, women had . . . been invisible . . . . [and] the first step towards preventing further human rights violations must be to put an end to such invisibility” (Committee against Torture, 2012a, para. 35). Ms. Belmir commented that, “the Committee was duty-bound to address any issue involving . . . a risk of torture” (para. 30); Mr. Menéndez noted that “trafficking could involve the use of torture” (para. 40). Indeed, the above 2012 Canada-Committee discussion ensued because of the non-governmen­ tal organization (NGO) shadow report of the Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW, 2012). The report called on the Government of Canada to immediately amend the Criminal Code by specifically naming and criminalizing non-State torture. The Committee against Torture’s Concluding Observations (2012c) included the Committee’s regrets about the Canadian delegation’s position on violence against women, reminding Canada that it “bears responsibility and its officials should be considered authors, complicit or otherwise responsible under the Convention for consenting to or acquiescing in acts of torture . . . by non­