Preface � I once asked a Guatemalan public defender how she knew when a woman’s murder was the result of gender-based violence and not a simple homicide. She showed me several pictures of women’s half or fully naked bodies exhibiting obvious signs of torture, mutilation, and violent sexual assault prior to their deaths. She said that was how women’s bodies were usually found. That was the difference between gender-based violence and simple homicide. Women’s bodies are often used as instruments to send messages of terror, or as instruments of pleasure, or as instru­ ments of experimentation. In all of these cases, gender-based violence is recognizable because of its profound denial of personhood. The common thread running through the collection of articles presented in this publication is that women’s bodies are still looked at and treated as instruments, or means to achieving a goal, rather than as autonomous individuals. Killing a body to end a life is different than killing a body to send a signal. In both cases, the person is refused her or his basic right to life, but in the latter, the person is a mark, a sign for others to see and use. The first chapter of this volume elaborates on the notion of gender-based violence, the need to incorporate a gender perspective in legal systems in general, and the responsibilities of States with regard to those at the margins of legal protections. Although gender-based violence has existed since the beginning of time, it has only entered the realm of human rights as a specific issue within the last decades. International human rights law, traditionally, has not protected women from the harms they have suffered as a result of being women. As with the rest of legal and political insti­ tutions, women have had to struggle for their experiences to be recognized. The invisibility of women’s harms has also included a lack of reparations with a gender perspective; if the suffering women have endured is not understood, its consequences cannot be adequately addressed. Owing to the inclusion of a gender perspective, human rights treaty bodies have started to include repa­ rations that put women, and not only their families or communities, at the center of their analyses. The new trends in international human rights are welcome by the international community, but they have not necessarily translated into substantive protection of women's and girl’s rights, and States must work to ensure that they carry through with their obligations to investigate incidents of gender-based violence and provide redress for victims. Chapter two examines specific forms of violence that women and girls experience throughout the world, including honor killings, female genital mutilation, pregnancy and virginity testing, and the use of forced contraception and addresses the need to advance the humanization of women’s rights. States have been reluctant to introduce laws opposing these forms of violence on grounds that certain practices are based on culture or religion. Although international human rights law protects the right to freedom of religion, sexual-based violence cannot be excused on religious grounds, and it has taken too long for laws to begin to act against practices that constitute torture or ill-treatment. The chapter invites readers to view women as the protagonists of human rights standards rather than continually framing men as the central figures of such rights; the standard of protection cannot always be viewed through the lens of male actors. The chapter then moves beyond the gender perspective as a tool to protect women and analyzes the need for the specific recognition of harms suffered by trans and intersex individuals. Perhaps one of the most important vii