Across the globe, many rape laws are still rooted in outdated notions of violence and resistance. Survivors are expected to prove they were physically overpowered or that they fought back, a standard that fails to reflect the realities of sexual violence and places the burden of responsibility unfairly on those who have been harmed.
This approach is not only harmful, it’s unjust.
Consent-based laws shift the legal focus where it belongs: on whether a person freely and voluntarily consented to participate in sexual activity. Without this, the law reinforces dangerous myths and risks perpetuating a culture of impunity.
Under international human rights standards, consent must be:
A consent-based approach recognizes the reality that many survivors freeze, submit, or dissociate, responses that are neurologically and psychologically common, not indicators of consent.
Shifting the legal understanding of rape to focus on consent rather than force or resistance has led to significant improvements in how cases are investigated and prosecuted, while also enabling more cases to move forward in the justice system. International human rights standards define rape as the absence of freely given and ongoing consent to participate in a sexual act. When justice system operators begin to understand rape as the absence of freely given and ongoing consent, it reshapes how sexual violence is investigated, prosecuted, and adjudicated. These efforts can lead to:
Consent-based legal models redefine rape by reshaping how justice systems are expected to deliver justice. They require law enforcement and prosecutors to interpret sexual encounters through an evidence-based lens that starts with one question: was consent freely and affirmatively given?
At Equality Now, we advocate for laws that enable survivors’ access to justice and for the disruption of systems that discriminate against them.
Our campaign to reform how justice system operators process cases of sexual violence focuses on:
We work with survivors, legal experts, activists, and legislators to end impunity and ensure that justice systems recognize that any sexual act without true consent is rape.
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