Gender-responsive rule of law and transitional justice acknowledge that conflict exacerbates gender inequality and discrimination. For instance:

• Women and girls face exclusion from decision-making spaces.
• Impunity for sexual and other gender-based violence remains widespread.
• Gender discrimination in the economy makes it even harder for women to recover from displacement.
• Discriminatory laws and social norms prevent survivors from obtaining justice, and institutions fail to respond to their needs.

These barriers silence victims and undermine the legitimacy and effectiveness of transitional justice and the rule of law. By contrast, gender-responsive approaches uphold women’s rights and recognize their leadership in peacebuilding, human rights, and justice. Such approaches are more likely to address structural inequalities, prevent recurring violence and advance commitments to gender equality.

Gender-responsive rule of law and transitional justice strategies broadly involve actions to respond to gender-based violations and redress sources of inequality and discrimination. They may include:

• Establishing national legislation in line with international standards on women’s rights.
• Increasing prosecutions and closing the impunity gap for gender-based crimes, including conflict-related sexual violence and reproductive violence.
• Upholding women’s right to participate and lead in all dimensions of rule of law institutions and reforms as well as transitional justice processes.
• Taking a comprehensive approach to transitional justice, encompassing judicial and non-judicial measures such as institutional reforms, prosecutions, truth telling, reparations programmes, traditional justice and the vetting of public officials, all of which should apply a gender lens.
• Ensuring that rule of law institutions and transitional justice processes have the necessary gender expertise to comprehensively address gender-based violence and rights violations.
• Closing information gaps and removing other barriers that limit access to formal and informal justice mechanisms, and consulting with women on avenues they prefer.
• Developing legal empowerment initiatives so that women gain access to legal systems and knowledge to navigate them.