Dorothy Thomas, head of the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch in the early 1990s, worked hard to define gender violence as a human rights violation. As her colleague at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe in 1994, I listened to her talk about getting Human Rights Watch, one of the largest human rights organizations, to take women's rights and gender violence seriously. .
The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, often called the Beijing Conference, clearly named violence against women as a violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Its final policy document, the Platform for Action, defined violence against women broadly as "any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life." (Sec D.113). It includes gender-based violence in the family, the community, or perpetrated by the state, including acts of violence and sexual abuse during armed conflict, forced sterilization and abortion, and female infanticide. By declaring protection from violence for women and girl children as a universal human right, the conference articulated a dramatic expansion of human rights. The Platform declares: .
"Violence against women both violates and impairs or nullifies the enjoyment by women of their human rights and fundamental freedoms. The long-standing failure to protect and promote those rights and freedoms in the case of violence against women is a matter of concern to all States and should be addressed." (Platform for Action, sec. D, 112). .
In 2002, the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Radhika Coomaraswamy, produced a report on cultural practices in the family that are violent to women. She described these practices as "an important issue that would define the international human rights debate over the next decade " (HR/CN/02/32: 10 April 2002, UN Press Release).