 It gives us the tools to ensure that no woman or girl is left behind, highlighting the intersectional nature of violence and its effect on women who experience multiple forms of discrimination. Taking violence against women and girls takes a lot of us working together. General Recommendation 35 draws together the experience of the last 25 years in the struggle against gender-based violence, both under the Convention and under other human rights regimes. It clearly articulates in an authoritative and detailed way the international legal obligations of states to eliminate all forms of public and private violence against women, not only in law but also in practice. It gives voice to the structural causes of gender-based violence against women and girls, the ideology of man's entitlement and privilege over women, and its pervasiveness of all spaces and spheres of human interaction and the impediments to its elimination, not just the often mentioned culture, tradition and religion, but also the reduction in public spending and austerity economics. It also provides standards and guidelines against which we will be measuring the work that we are doing on the ground. For example, the work we are doing with the chiefs and other stakeholders on ending our marriages as a harmful cultural practice that affects the rights of women and girls. And now with your new General Comment 35 you've gone a step further and shown how states not only have due diligence obligations to ensure that all sorts of private violence is prevented, punished and people are protected from all sorts of non-state actors, but you've also gone on to show how the non-state actors themselves have obligations to refrain from sexual violence. This is particularly useful for all of us who are engaged with preventing sexual violence in armed conflict. This general recommendation builds on the community's growing jurisprudence on the need for states' parties to robustly regulate arms transfers and address arms proliferation. Arms accessibility and availability can facilitate or exacerbate gender-based violence even outside situations of armed conflict. It also provides us with an opportunity to expand the notion of violence against women as General Recommendation 35 recognizes violence as a critical area of action for states. We urge states to use this new guidance to design both gender and age-sensitive policies that tackle the root causes of violence and discrimination against girls and women. SIDAO, in its General Comment, should demonstrate that the gender-based killing of women in the private sphere is both a foreseeable and preventable form of violence against women which imposes a range of obligations upon the state. It is so significant that General Comment 35 recognizes that violations of sexual and reproductive rights, such as the criminalization of abortion and forced sterilization, are forms of gender-based violence and can constitute cruel, inhumane, integrating treatment. And it's really important as well the recommendation of the comment that judges, lawyers and medical professionals be trained in the ways that gender bias can lead to gender-based violence, including in the areas of sexual and reproductive health. This recommendation, it's really complete and update. Let's tackle together violence against women in its root. Let's end it all together. It amplifies the normative framework and state accountability for gender-based violence. And it broadens the understanding of gender-based violence to include violations of sexual and reproductive health and rights, as well as harmful practices. It establishes that violence is experienced over the life cycle by girls, young women and women. Fighting toxic masculinities and bringing boys and men to the table should spark the end to violence against women and girls. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women has declared that the prohibition of gender-based violence has become international customary law. It means that gender-based violence must be forbidden in all states and women and girls must be protected from such violence everywhere in the world. There can be no justification for gender-based violence and no cause or excuse for negligent responses. General Recommendation 35 tells us how to end such violence and it's high time we take action.