compliance to national and international standards on women’s human rights, specialized studies and researches on gender issues, gender equality frameworks and analytical tools, and innovative approaches and strategies to promote women’s rights, among others. 1. Gender-Based Violence Documentation and Research The [Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women] in article 1 defines discrimination against women. The definition of discrimination includes gender-based violence, that is, violence that is directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately. It includes acts that inflict physical, mental or sexual harm or suffering, threats of such acts, coercion and other deprivations of liberty. Gender-based violence may breach specific provisions of the Convention, regardless of whether those provisions expressly mention violence. (General Recommendation No. 19, CEDAW) Documentation plays a critical role addressing gender-based discrimination (GBV). Its function goes beyond recording the various forms of violations that women face on the basis of their sex, but it is also a source of knowledge that can be utilized to critique and broaden the current discourse on women’s human rights and gender equality, as well as improve and innovate on interventions related to the protection and promotion of such. Literature is replete with examples of this role of documentation and research in the women’s human rights movement: through conscientious documentation and research, it is now recognized that violence against women is a systemic form of oppression against a group, embedded in social, political and cultural institutions. Documentation and research has also challenged the prevailing idea that abuse of women is only physical; even more devastating in the long run are the economic and psychological violence that cripples women’s selfworth and dignity as human beings. These concepts – that gender-based violence exists, it is perpetuated by institutions in society, and that it is more than physical abuse – are now reflected in international and Philippine laws and inform State actions to protect and promote gender equality. However, many more needs to be done for GBV and women’s human rights documentation and research. The concept of women/femininity being the singular “Other” in relation to men/masculinity has been taken over by the idea of diversity and intersectionality: women are not a homogenous group, and even a singular woman is a constellation of social identities that collectively construct who she is, and defines her current capabilities and the power she has within specific contexts. Intersectionality as an analytical frame is informative in this regard. Intersectionality forwards that women’s marginalization is not simply because of her gender, but a confluence of her social identities and location in society. In doing so, the phenomenon of VAW is nuanced: while all women are vulnerable to VAW, their experience of violence and access to resources to overcome it will be influenced by their socio-economic class, ethnicity, age, cultural affinities and politics, among others.1 Related to this, feminist literature also emphasized the importance of contextualization in documenting VAW. To focus on the violation per se and isolating the incident from the constellation of socio-cultural, ecnomic and political factors that frames women’s experiences of gender-based violence and society’s response to this experience, is to reduce the issue to a personal problem brought into a “neutral” public arena where there exists an array of services, and the For fuller discussions on intersectionality as an analytical frame for GBV and women’s human rights, see Botts, T.F. (2017), Winker, G. and Degele, N. (2011), and van der Hoogte, L. and Kingma, K. (2004) 1 Making Data Work for Women’s Human Rights A Proposed Framework for the CHR Observatory on Gender-Based Violence 2