[citation needed] The earliest documented prosecution of gender-based/targeted crimes is from 1474 when Sir Peter von Hagenbach was convicted for rapes committed by his troops.
Due to the lack of information, violence against women is often dismissed as a "private" matter and no legal action is done(also this method of thinking, values for men too).
[3] Despite the reforms that will be mentioned in the "Rape" section below, there is still a continuous debate over how the trials of the crimes should be conducted and over the effectiveness of the prosecution.
[6] This notion of frequent false accusations came about after the police and investigators began to follow an "over-cautious approach" when addressing reports of domestic violence.
and special units to prosecute rape crimes, rape was a difficult case to prosecute as a crime; this is due to issue of consent, the need to provide sufficient evidence to charge the accused, and sometime biased cultural depictions of sexuality and gender.
[7] In the United States, the late 1980s saw a nationwide movement of women's groups lobbying for reforms in rape laws.
[9] The new law, Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, 2013, also defines new crimes such as stalking and voyeurism, expands the definition of rape, and brings higher sentences for punishment of the offenders (such as the death penalty for repeated offenders and for cases resulting in the victim's death).
In December 1993, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights published the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
The idea that marriage grants either spouse's consent to sex formed the basis for the reason why marital rape is not a universally accepted crime.
[12] Traditional perceptions of marriage and of women contribute to the reasons why marital rape is not universally identified as crime.
The act has been practiced in parts of Africa for centuries, but after the United Nations made recommendations in its Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), in the present times, many nations such as Ghana and Egypt have placed laws stopping the practice of FGM through legal means.
[20] FGM came about to the attention of the American public with a U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals case in which a 17-year-old girl from Togo fled to the U.S. after being forced into a polygamous marriage and told she was to face genital mutilation.
[21] A landmark case is that of Khalid Adem who was the first person prosecuted and convicted of FGM in the United States after he circumcised his two-year-old daughter.
The lack of United States ratifying the statute is considered as limiting the potential of the ICC to prosecute the gender-targeted crimes.
[27] For example, another failure that the Tokyo Tribunal was its omission to call the female victims to give evidence at trial.
[27] The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was established in November 1994 by the United Nations Security Council with jurisdiction over the crimes committed during the Rwandan genocide.
[28] Under the ICTR, the sexual assault unit of the (OTP) created a policy to specifically carry out the legal proceedings of rape, genital mutilation, and other gender-targeted crimes.
[29] The case broke through the criminal networks that attempted to protect high-status, powerful political figures such as Akayesu who while not directly carrying out the slaughter, gave out undocumented orders for the mass killings.
[26] The case also made the following significant changes[27] The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was established in 1993 by the United Nations Security Council to conduct the trials of crimes committed during the Yugoslav Wars.
[27] Feminist activists played a part in creating the structure of the ICTY over the gender-targeted crimes, and states and international organizations urged criminalizing rape with the main argument that the Geneva Conventions provided the context.
[30] In Kunarac, The ICTY convicted Serbian men of confining Bosnian Muslim women under the charges of enslavement, which was listed as a crime against humanity in the Statue.
[30] Furundžija was a commander of the Jokers – a unit of the Bosnian Croatian Militia, which allegedly attacked villages of Bosnian Muslims through imprisonment, murder, sexual abuse, and other forms of violence – he was accused of participating in the torture involving forced sexual intercourse of a woman at the Jokers' headquarters.
[27] The Čelebići case found four men guilty for committing various acts of violence while detaining Bosnian Muslims in a prison camp.