CEDAW/C/GC/38
I. Introduction
1.
Article 6 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
against Women sets out the legal obligation of States parties to take all appropriate
measures, including legislation, to suppress all forms of trafficking in women and
exploitation of prostitution of women. Despite the plethora of existing legal and
policy frameworks to combat trafficking at the natio nal, regional and international
levels, women and girls continue to comprise the majority of detected victims of
trafficking across the world, and perpetrators enjoy widespread impunity.
2.
In the view of the Committee, the situation persists due to a lack of appreciation
of the gender dimensions of trafficking overall and, in particular, of the trafficking of
women and girls who are exposed to various types of exploitation, including sexual
exploitation. A gender analysis of the crime reveals that its root causes lie in sexbased discrimination, including the failure to address the prevailing economic and
patriarchal structures and the adverse and gender-differentiated impact of the labour,
migration and asylum regimes of States parties that create the situ ations of
vulnerability leading to women and girls being trafficked.
3.
Globally dominant economic policies further exacerbate large -scale economic
inequality between States and between individuals, which manifests as labour
exploitation, including denial by corporations, public procurement officials and
employers of an obligation to ensure that there are no trafficked persons in their
supply or production chains. Globalized macroeconomic and political factors,
including the privatization of public goods, deregulated labour markets, the shrinking
of the welfare State, and austerity measures forming part of structural adjustment
policies and as an aid conditionality, often exacerbate unemployment and poverty and
produce economic injustices that have a disproportionate impact on women. Often
accompanied by other economic policies, such as reduction in government spending
on social services and the privatization of public goods and services, regressive tax
shifts and labour market reforms all severely hamper Sta tes’ abilities to implement
social policies that form the basis for dismantling structural inequalities, including
gender inequalities and violations of women’s human rights in various spheres.
Reduced social expenditure further shifts the responsibilities for basic social services
from the Government to women. Those factors reinforce, and are perpetuated by,
discriminatory cultural and social norms that engender the oppression of various
groups of women.
II. Objectives and scope
4.
Mandated under article 21 of the Convention to develop general recommendations
with the aim of clarifying the obligation of States parties to combat discrimination
against women and girls, the Committee advances that a life free from being trafficked
must be recognized as a human right and appropriate conditions must be created for that
right to be fully enjoyed by women and girls. States parties must pursue all appropriate
means to eradicate trafficking and exploitation of prostitution to ensure that laws,
systems, regulations and funding are in place to make the realization of that right
effective, rather than illusory. The provisions of the Convention are mutually
reinforcing so as to provide complete protection. The present general recommendation
links article 6 of the Convention with all other articles of the Convention and the
existing jurisprudence of the Committee.
5.
The present general recommendation contextualizes the implementation of the
obligations of States parties to combat all forms of trafficking, as stipu lated in
article 6 of the Convention, in the context of global migration. Pathways of trafficking
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