DRAFT CEDAW General recommendation on Trafficking in
Women and Girls in the Context of Global Migration
rights of persons who are most vulnerable to trafficking, its victims, as set out in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and in the core United Nations human rights treaties.12 The 2010
Recommended Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Human Trafficking
(E/2002/68/Add.1) elaborated by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights further provides an important soft-law framework for integrating a human
rights-based approach in all anti-trafficking interventions.
10.
Noting the distinction between the smuggling of migrants and trafficking in persons,
the Committee highlights the particular vulnerability of smuggled migrants to being
trafficked.13
11.
Combatting the crime of trafficking in women and girls requires engagement of the
larger protection framework stemming from international humanitarian, refugee, criminal,
labour and private law and the statelessness conventions. 14 The Convention reinforces and
complements the international law regime for trafficking victims, particularly where explicit
gender equality provisions are absent from international agreements.15
IV. Root causes and discouraging the demand that fosters exploitation
through trafficking
a.
Women and girls are disproportionately affected by human trafficking
12.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, of all the trafficking
victims detected in 2016, women and girls made up: 94% of those trafficked for sexual
exploitation; 35% of those trafficked for forced labour; and 57% of those trafficked for other
purposes.16 72% of all detected trafficking victims worldwide in 2016 were women and girls.
12
UDHR, article 2, 3 and 28; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its First Optional
Protocol; International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights and its Optional Protocol;
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; Convention Against
Torture, and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and its Optional Protocol;
Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocols on the sale of children, child prostitution
and child pornography and on armed conflict; International Convention on the Protection of the Rights
of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families; Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities and its Optional Protocol. See also UN Trafficking Protocol, article 2 (b).
13
Article 3 of the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air that supplements
the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime defines smuggling of migrants
(A/RES/55/25) (2000) as: “the procurement, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or
other material benefit, of the illegal entry of a person into a state party of which the person is not a
national.”
14
Geneva Conventions (I, II, III and IV), 1949, and the Additional Protocols I and II, 1977, relating to
the protection of victims of international and non-international armed conflict respectively; Rome
Statute of the International Criminal Court, 1998; United Nations Convention Against Transnational
Organized Crime, its Trafficking Protocol, and its Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by
Land, Sea and Air, 2000; Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 1951, and its Protocol, 1967;
Conventions relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, the 1954, and on the Reduction of
Statelessness, 1961. Also see General Recommendation No. 32 (2014) (CEDAW/C/GC/32), paras. 910; Declaration on Violence Against Women (art. 2); Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and
Slavery, 1926, and its Supplementary Convention, 1956; ILO Convention No. 29 Concerning Forced
and Compulsory Labour, 1930, its Protocol, 2014, and Forced Labour (Supplementary Measures)
Recommendation (No. 203), 2014; ILO Convention No. 105 Concerning the Abolition of Forced
Labour, 1957; ILO Convention No. 182 Concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the
Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour, 1999; and ILO Convention No. 189 Concerning
Decent Work for Domestic Workers, 2011, and Domestic Workers Recommendation (No. 201), 2011.
15
General recommendations: No. 32 (2014) (CEDAW/C/GC/32), para. 10; No. 30 (2013)
(CEDAW/C/GC/30), para. 19
16
UNODC, Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2018, p.28.
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