Teresa Fernández Paredes 59 tion of human rights by third parties4. Both the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) have already developed a “due diligence test” to determine whether or not the State is responsible for the acts of private agents5. As the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women has said, “the application of [the] due diligence standard, to date, has tended to be State-centric and limited to responding to violence when it occurs, largely neglecting the obligation to prevent and compensate and the responsibility of non-State actors.”6 Regarding torture7, it has traditionally been interpreted from a male perspective in which the male prisoner, deprived of freedom and tortured by State agents in the context of a political strug­ gle, is the dominant image.8 Scholars such as Catharine MacKinnon have criticized this image, arguing that it ignores forms of systematic violence that women suffer more frequently (such as rape) or exclusively (such as machista violence within the couple).9 To counter this tendency where only the suffering of men is considered torture and to establish that the abuses committed against women also meet the definition of torture, MacKinnon argues that it must be recognized that these abuses cause serious harm, that they are systematic and based on women’s status as women, that they are defined by the distribution of power in society that places women in a subordinate posi­ tion to men, and that States are complicit in their commission when they condone these acts and fail to prosecute them vigorously.10 The women’s movement has played a key role in transforming international law, which was deeply rooted in a hierarchical, patriarchal, and heteronormative visions of law that disregarded the specific violence suffered by women and girls.11 Indeed, feminist theory has sought to decon­ struct the dichotomy between the public and private sphere12 on which traditional law was built, 4 Waisman, Viviana (2010), Human Trafficking: States Obligations to protect victim´s rights, the current framework and a new due diligence standard, Hastings International and Comparative Law Review, vol. 33/2, pp. 385-430, 2010. 5 IAHR Commission, Velásquez Rodriguez v. Honduras, 29 July 1988, Series C: Decisions and Judgments, No. 04; ECHR Commission, Osman v. United Kingdom (Application no. 23452/94); Z and Others v. the United Kingdom 29392/95, [2001] European Commission on Human Rights 333, 10 May 2001; E and Others v. the United Kingdom, 33218/96, [2002] ECHR 590, 26 November 2002. 6 UN. Integration of The Human Rights of Women and the Gender Perspective: Violence Against Women the Due Diligence Standard as a Tool for the Elimination of Violence against Women, Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Yakin Ertürk http://repository.un.org/bitstream/ handle/11176/257909/E_CN.4_2006_61-EN.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y. 7 For purposes of this article, and following the feminist’s critics to IHRL, I will be using a broad approach to torture and not the traditional one pointed out in Article 1 of the Convention Against Torture. 8 McGlynn, Clare (2008): Rape as “Torture”? Catharine MacKinnon and questions of feminist strategy, p. 75-76. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Copelon, Rondha (2007). Gender Violence as Torture: The Contribution of CAT General Comment no. 2, 11 N.Y. City L. rev. 229. 12 “Since the dawn of Western thought, our thinking has been structured around complete sets of dualisms or opposing pairs that divide things into contrasting spheres or opposite poles. The public/private dichotomy is one of these dualisms (...) According to liberal theorists, the public/private dichotomy acts on individuals in a neutral and general fashion. Women are relegated to the private sphere of home and family, while the public sphere of work, law, economics, and politics is seen as men’s territory. This phenomenon is explained as something natural and convenient and a matter of personal choice (...) However, this dichotomy is a “genderized” and ethnocentric dichotomy that serves to legitimize men’s domination of women: by assigning women to the private sphere, their inequality with men is perpetuated, because women are seen as depending upon men for survival. Women’s interests are thus disregarded and the status quo is preserved.” Miguel, Carmen (2014) Pandataria: Una Mirada Feminista al Derecho Internacional de los Derechos Humanos y al Derecho Internacional de las Personas Refugiadas. Doctorate program: Human Rights, Democracy, and International Justice. Pp. 42-43. Valencia.