prejudices and custom…or the stereotyped roles for men and women”.155 The decision is significant in that it highlights the obligation of the State to take steps to modify social notions of gender stereotypes and eliminate prejudices and customs that harm women and are at the root cause of all forms of violence against women, and contribute to failures to respond to it. 5.1.4 Limitations and Opportunities  The CEDAW Committee rendered the communication in Kayhan v. Turkey 156 inadmissible on the grounds that sex discrimination was not explicitly raised as an issue in the domestic proceeding although such discrimination was implicit in the facts of the case. Thus if an issue was not raised in the domestic proceedings, it cannot be raised for the first time in a communication with the CEDAW. It needs to be raised at the domestic level and only if it fails, can it be raised again with CEDAW.  Despite Article 2(e) of CEDAW, which specifically prohibits discrimination by “any person, group or enterprise” to raise a complaint of violation of a treaty right, a woman must establish, like with other treaty bodies, that the violation has been by a State Party. In order to raise ‘private’, or ‘non-State’ violations, it must be shown that the State has failed to act to prevent the harm or to properly investigate, prosecute, punish and provide reparation under national laws. Thus it is a two-step process and a double burden for women to raise violations by non-State actors. One, women need to show that they are victims of conduct amounting to a violation of a treaty right. Two, the applicant must be able to demonstrate that the State is responsible under international law for its failure to exercise due diligence to prevent or prosecute it.  The CEDAW Committee has done little with regard to enhancing the definition of torture to include sexual violence and violations by non-State actors. Given that CEDAW itself does not contain a specific prohibition against torture, the CEDAW Committee could have taken all opportunities to clarify and affirm that women may be victims of torture and therefore in need of protection or that non-State actors too may be responsible for torture. In the 2005 report of the fact-finding inquiry in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the CEDAW Committee adopted the traditional interpretation of torture despite the fact that by then other regional and international bodies had already established rape and other forms of sexual violence as torture. The report speaks of torture as distinct from rape and other forms of sexual violence by private citizens. 157 By not addressing rape as constituting torture, the CEDAW Committee missed an important opportunity to affirm and lend the force of its weight and credibility to the decisions of regional and international bodies.  The inquiry procedure of the Optional Protocol of CEDAW has been under-utilised. Since the OP-CEDAW came into force, the Committee has conducted only one inquiry in over a decade.158 The limited use of this procedure may precisely be an opportunity for women to consider activating it, particularly or in addition to when individual applications at other mechanisms fail. Since this procedure relates to multiple violations and not an individual complaints mechanism, groups instead of individual victims may take the initiative to activate the inquiry. 155 Non-Discrimination in International Law – A Handbook for Practitioners, 2011 Edition, Interights, London, p. 127. 156 Kayhan v. Turkey, CEDAW Comm. No. 8/2005 (27 January 2006). 157 CEDAW, Report on Mexico produced by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, and Reply from the Government of Mexico, UN Doc. CEDAW/C/2005/OP.8/MEXICO, 27 January 2005 ¶¶ 232, 241, 273, 274. 158 Ibid. REDRESS | INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS TREATIES 45