1. The State party should ensure timely gender-sensitive training for police and investigative authorities on the Convention, the Optional Protocol thereto and the Committee’s general recommendations, in particular general recommendations No. 19 (1992) on violence against women, No. 28, No. 33 (2015) on women’s access to justice and No. 35 (2017) on gender-based violence against women, updating general recommendation No. 19, in order that crimes with homophobic undertones committed against lesbian women be understood as gender-based violence or hate crimes requiring active State intervention.
2. The full implementation of the Convention requires States parties not only to take steps to eliminate direct and indirect discrimination and improve the de facto position of women, but also to modify and transform gender stereotypes and eliminate wrongful gender stereotyping, a root cause and consequence of discrimination against women. Gender stereotypes are perpetuated through various means and institutions, including laws and legal systems, and can be perpetuated by State actors in all branches and at all levels of Government and by private actors. […] Criminal laws are particularly important in ensuring that women are able to exercise their human rights, including their right to access to justice, on the basis of equality.
(The applicant claimed a violation of Articles 1, 2 and 5 CEDAW on account of Russia’s failure to effectively investigate a violent offence committed by private individuals against them owing to their sexual orientation. Having seen a lesbian couple holding hands, hugging and kissing, a man hit them in the face, head and body. He also shouted homophobic insults, threatening to kill them. Another man filmed the attack. The couple reported the incident to the police. The police, however, refused to open the investigation for two years, on the basis that no crime had been committed. After the City Court and the District Court had dismissed the applicants’ appeal, they reclassified the crime as hate crime, but they were unsuccessful. CEDAW upheld their complaint against Russia for the violation of the prohibition of discrimination, having the applicants been subject to intersecting forms of discrimination as lesbian women, ex Articles 1, 2 (a) and (c)-(e) and 5 (a) CEDAW).
