CEDAW/C/GC/30 systems may no longer exist or function with any level of efficiency or effectiveness. Existing justice systems may often be more likely to violate women’s rights than to protect them, which can deter victims from seeking justice. All barriers faced by women in gaining access to justice before the national courts prior to the conflict, such as legal, procedural, institutional, social and practical barriers, in addition to entrenched gender discrimination, are exacerbated during conflict, persist during the post-conflict period and operate alongside the breakdown of the police and judicial structures to deny or hinder women’s access to justice. 75. In the aftermath of conflict, transitional justice mechanisms are established with the aim of addressing the legacy of human rights abuses, dealing with the root causes of the conflict, facilitating the transition from conflict to democratic governance, institutionalizing the State machinery designed to protect and advance fundamental human rights and freedoms, delivering justice and ensuring accountability for all violations of human rights and humanitarian law and ensuring their non-repetition. To achieve these multiple objectives, temporary judicial and/or non-judicial mechanisms, including truth commissions and hybrid courts, are often instituted either to replace dysfunctional national judicial systems or to supplement them. 76. The most egregious and pervasive violations that occur during conflict often remain unpunished by transitional justice mechanisms and are normalized in the post-conflict environment. Efforts to strengthen and/or complement domestic justice systems notwithstanding, transitional justice mechanisms have failed and continue to fail women by not adequately delivering justice and reparations for all harms suffered, thereby entrenching the impunity enjoyed by perpetrators of women’s human rights violations. Transitional justice mechanisms have not succeeded in fully addressing the gendered impact of conflict and in taking into account the interdependence and interrelatedness of all human rights violations that occur during conflict. For most women, post-conflict justice priorities should not be limited to ending violations of civil and political rights, but should include violations of all rights, including economic, social and cultural rights. 77. States parties’ obligations under the Convention require them to address all violations of women’s rights, in addition to the underlying structural sex and gender-based discrimination that underpinned such violations. Besides providing redress to women for gender-based violations suffered during conflict, transitional justice mechanisms have the potential to secure a transformative change in women’s lives. Given their important role in laying the foundation for the new society, such mechanisms represent a unique opportunity for State parties to lay the ground towards the achievement of substantive gender equality by addressing pre-existing and entrenched sex and gender-based discrimination that had impeded women’s enjoyment of their rights under the Convention. 78. Although international tribunals have contributed to recognizing and prosecuting gender-based crimes, a number of challenges remain to ensuring women’s access to justice and many procedural, institutional and social barriers continue to prevent them from participating in international justice processes. Passive acquiescence of past violence reinforces the culture of silence and stigmatization. Reconciliation processes such as truth and reconciliation commissions often provide women survivors with an opportunity to deal with their past in a safe setting and constitute official historical records. They should, 13-54331 21/24