Violence Against Women Migrant Workers

Calls upon States Members of the United Nations to adopt measures for the effective implementation of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women,¹² including applying them to women migrant workers, as well as all relevant measures emanating from recent world conferences;

Encourages Member States to enact and/or reinforce penal, civil, labour and administrative sanctions in domestic legislation to punish and redress the wrongs done to women and girls who are subjected to any form of violence, whether in the home, the workplace, the community or society;

Also encourages Member States to adopt and/or implement and periodically to review and analyse legislation to ensure its effectiveness in eliminating violence against women, emphasizing the prevention of violence and the prosecution of offenders, and to take measures to ensure the protection of women subjected to violence and that they have access to just and effective remedies, including compensation and indemnification and healing of victims, and for the rehabilitation of perpetrators;

Encourages Member States to consider signing and ratifying or acceding to the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families,¹³ as well as the Slavery Convention of 1926;¹⁴

Recommends that the issue of violence against women migrant workers be included in the agenda of the inter-agency meeting that precedes the regular session of the Commission on the Status of Women;

Requests the Secretary-General to convene a meeting of an expert group, with the participation of the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on violence against women and under the regular programme of the Division for the Advancement of Women of the Secretariat, to submit recommendations for improving coordination of the various efforts of United Nations agencies on the issue of violence against women migrant workers and to develop concrete indicators as a basis for determining the situation of women migrant workers for submission, through normal channels, to the General Assembly at its fifty-first session;

Requests the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Centre for Human Rights of the Secretariat and the Special Rapporteur, as well as all relevant bodies and programmes in the United Nations system, when addressing the issue of violence against women, to give particular attention to the issue of violence perpetrated against women migrant workers and to submit reports thereon to the General Assembly;

Invites trade unions to support the realization of the rights of women migrant workers by assisting them in organizing themselves so as to enable them better to assert their rights;

Requests the Secretary-General to report to the General Assembly at its fifty-first session on the implementation of the present resolution, including on reports received from all authorities and bodies in the United Nations system, Member States, intergovernmental organizations and other concerned bodies, with due regard for possible measures to improve the reporting procedure.