Violence Against Women Migrant Workers

A/RES/68/137View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 28a Advancement of women, published in 2014.

What other versions does this mandate have?

19 versions · 1994–2025

This is an older version — the most recent is A/RES/80/185

Year	Symbol	Title	Word length	Text similarity
2025	A/RES/80/185	Violence against women migrant workers	6,874	93%Compare
2023	A/RES/78/180	Violence against women migrant workers	6,861	89%Compare
2022	A/RES/76/141	Violence against women migrant workers	6,155	94%Compare
2020	A/RES/74/127	Violence against women migrant workers	5,878	80%Compare
2018	A/RES/72/149	Violence against women migrant workers	5,368	81%Compare

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

11 reports · 2005–2025

Year	Symbol	Title	Mandate resolution
2025	A/80/317	Violence against women migrant workers report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/78/180
2023	A/78/292	Violence against women migrant workers report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/76/141
2021	A/76/245	Violence against women migrant workers report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/74/127
2019	A/74/235	Violence against women migrant workers report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/72/149
2017	A/72/215	Violence against women migrant workers report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/70/130

What subjects does this mandate have?

8 subjects

Gender Discrimination Gender-Based Violence Migration Policy Trafficking in Persons Women Migrant Workers Women Migrants Women's Employment Women's Rights

What’s in this document?

29 operative paragraphs

Takes note with appreciation of the report of the Secretary-General;¹⁶

¹⁶A/68/178.

Invites Member States to consider ratifying relevant International Labour Organization conventions, including Convention No. 189 on decent work for domestic workers, and 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,Error: Reference source not found the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime,¹⁷ the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime,¹⁸ the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons¹⁹ and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness,²⁰ as well as all other human rights treaties that contribute to the protection of the rights of women migrant workers, and also encourages Member States to implement the United Nations Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons;²¹

¹⁷United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 2237, No. 39574.

¹⁸Ibid., vol. 2241, No. 39574.

¹⁹Ibid., vol. 360, No. 5158.

²⁰Ibid., vol. 989, No. 14458.

²¹Resolution 64/293.

Takes note of the reports of the Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Council on the human rights of migrants submitted to the Council at its seventeenth and twentieth sessions,²² in particular their elaboration of the vulnerabilities and challenges faced by irregular migrants, including negative public perceptions and limited access to protection, assistance and justice;

²²A/HRC/17/33 and A/HRC/20/24.

Encourages all United Nations special rapporteurs on human rights whose mandates touch on the issues of violence against women migrant workers to improve the collection of information on and analysis of those areas within their mandates relating to the current challenges facing women migrant workers, and also encourages Governments to cooperate with the special rapporteurs in this regard;

Calls upon all Governments to incorporate a human rights, gender-sensitive and people-centred perspective in legislation, policies and programmes on international migration and on labour and employment, consistent with their human rights obligations and commitments under human rights instruments, for the prevention of and protection of migrant women against violence and discrimination, exploitation and abuse, to take effective measures to ensure that such migration and labour policies do not reinforce discrimination, and, where necessary, to conduct impact assessment studies of such legislation, policies and programmes in order to identify the impact of measures taken and the results achieved in regard to women migrant workers;

Calls upon Governments to adopt or strengthen measures to protect the human rights of women migrant workers, including domestic workers, regardless of their immigration status, including in policies that regulate the recruitment and deployment of women migrant workers, to consider expanding dialogue among States on devising innovative methods to promote legal channels of migration, inter alia, in order to deter irregular migration, to consider incorporating a gender perspective into immigration laws in order to prevent discrimination and violence against women, including in independent, circular and temporary migration, and to consider permitting, in accordance with national legislation, women migrant workers who are victims of violence to apply for residency permits independently of abusive employers or spouses, and to eliminate abusive sponsorship systems;

Urges Governments to enhance bilateral, regional, interregional and international cooperation to address violence against women migrant workers, fully respecting international law, including international human rights law, as well as to strengthen efforts to reduce the vulnerability of women migrant workers by facilitating effective access to justice and effective action in the areas of law enforcement, prosecution, prevention, capacity-building and victim protection and support, by exchanging information and good practices in combating violence and discrimination against women migrant workers and by fostering sustainable development alternatives to migration in countries of origin;

Also urges Governments to take into account the best interests of the child by adopting or strengthening measures to promote and protect the human rights of migrant girls, including unaccompanied girls, regardless of their immigration status, so as to prevent labour and economic exploitation, discrimination, sexual harassment, violence and sexual abuse in the workplace, including in domestic work;

Further urges Governments to strongly encourage all stakeholders, especially the private sector, including employment agencies involved in recruiting women migrant workers, to strengthen the focus on and funding support for the prevention of violence against women migrant workers, in particular by promoting the access of women to meaningful and gender-sensitive information and education on, inter alia, the costs and benefits of migration, rights and benefits to which they are entitled in the countries of origin and employment, overall conditions in countries of employment and procedures for legal migration, as well as to ensure that laws and policies governing recruiters, employers and intermediaries promote adherence to and respect for the human rights of migrant workers, particularly women;

Encourages all States to remove obstacles that may prevent the transparent, safe, unrestricted and expeditious transfer of remittances of migrants to their countries of origin or to any other countries, including, where appropriate, by reducing transaction costs and implementing woman-friendly remittance transfer, savings and investment schemes, including diaspora investment schemes, in conformity with applicable national legislation, and to consider, as appropriate, measures to solve other problems that may impede women migrant workers’ access to and management of their economic resources;

Calls upon States to address the structural and underlying causes of violence against women migrant workers through education, dissemination of information and awareness-raising, by promoting their empowerment and, where relevant, their integration into the formal economy, in particular in economic decision-making, and by promoting their participation in public life, as appropriate;

Calls upon Governments to recognize the right of women migrant workers, regardless of their immigration status, to have access to emergency health care, and in this regard to ensure that women migrant workers are not discriminated against on the grounds of pregnancy and childbirth and, in accordance with national legislation, to address the vulnerabilities to HIV experienced by migrant populations and support their access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support;

Urges States that have not yet done so to adopt and implement legislation and policies that protect all women migrant workers, including those in domestic service, to include therein, and improve where necessary, relevant monitoring and inspection measures in line with applicable International Labour Organization conventions and other instruments to ensure compliance with international obligations and to grant women migrant workers in domestic service access to gender-sensitive, transparent mechanisms for bringing complaints against employers, including terminating their contracts in case of labour and economic exploitation, discrimination, sexual harassment, violence and sexual abuse in the workplace, while stressing that such instruments should not punish women migrant workers, and calls upon States to promptly investigate and punish all violations of their rights;

Calls upon Governments, in cooperation with international organizations, non-governmental organizations, the private sector and other stakeholders, to provide women migrant workers who are victims of violence, irrespective of their immigration status, in line with domestic legislation, with the full range of emergency assistance and protection and, to the extent possible, gender-sensitive services that are culturally and linguistically appropriate, in accordance with relevant international human rights instruments and applicable conventions;

Also calls upon Governments to ensure that legislative provisions and judicial processes are in place for women’s access to justice, to enhance, develop or maintain legal frameworks and specific gender-sensitive policies to explicitly meet the needs and rights of women migrant workers and to take appropriate steps to reform existing legislation and policies to capture their needs and protect their rights;

Further calls upon Governments, in particular those of the countries of origin and destination, to put in place penal and criminal sanctions, in order to punish perpetrators of violence against women migrant workers and intermediaries, and gender-sensitive redress and justice mechanisms that victims can access effectively and that allow their views and concerns to be presented and considered at appropriate stages of proceedings, including other measures that will allow victims to be present during the judicial process, when possible, and to protect women migrant workers who are victims of violence from revictimization, including by authorities;

Urges all States to adopt effective measures to put an end to the arbitrary arrest and detention of women migrant workers and to take action to prevent and punish any form of illegal deprivation of the liberty of women migrant workers by individuals or groups;

Encourages Governments to formulate and implement training programmes for their law enforcement officials, immigration officers and border officials, diplomatic and consular officials, judiciary, prosecutors, public sector medical staff and other service providers, with a view to sensitizing those public sector workers to the issue of violence against women migrant workers and imparting to them the necessary skills and attitude to ensure the delivery of proper, professional and gender-sensitive interventions;

Also encourages Governments to promote coherence between migration, labour and anti-trafficking policies and programmes concerning women migrant workers, based on a human rights, gender-sensitive and people-centred perspective, to ensure that the human rights of women migrant workers are protected throughout the migration process and to enhance efforts to prevent violence against women migrant workers, prosecute perpetrators and protect and support victims and their families;

Calls upon States, in accordance with the provisions of article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations,²³ to ensure that, if a woman migrant worker is arrested or committed to prison or custody pending trial, or is detained in any other manner, the competent authorities respect her freedom to communicate with and have access to the consular officials of the country of her nationality and, in this regard, to inform without delay, if that woman migrant worker so requests, the consular post of her State of nationality;

²³United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 596, No. 8638.

Invites the United Nations system and other concerned intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations to cooperate with Governments, within existing resources, towards a better understanding of the issues concerning women and international migration, and to improve the collection, dissemination and analysis of sex- and age-disaggregated data and information in order to assist in the formulation of migration and labour policies that are, inter alia, gender-sensitive and that protect human rights, as well as to aid in policy assessment and to continue to support national efforts to address violence against women migrant workers in a coordinated way that ensures effective implementation, enhances their impact and strengthens positive outcomes for women migrant workers;

Encourages Governments to formulate national policies concerning women migrant workers that are based on up-to-date, relevant sex-disaggregated data and analysis, in close consultation with women migrant workers and relevant stakeholders throughout the policy process, and also encourages Governments to ensure that this process is adequately resourced and that the resulting policies have measurable targets and indicators, timetables and monitoring and accountability measures, in particular for employment agencies, employers and public officials, and provide for impact assessments and ensure multi-sector coordination within and between countries of origin, transit and destination through appropriate mechanisms;

Encourages concerned Governments, in particular those of the countries of origin, transit and destination, to avail themselves of the expertise of the United Nations, including the Statistics Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the Secretariat and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women), to develop and enhance appropriate sex-disaggregated national data collection, analysis and dissemination methodologies that will generate comparable data, and tracking and reporting systems on violence against women migrant workers and, wherever possible, on violations of their rights at all stages of the migration process, and:

To further study the costs of violence against women, including migrant workers, to the women themselves, their families and their communities;

To analyse the opportunities available to women migrant workers and their impact on development;

To support the improvement of macrodata on remittances, for appropriate policy formulation and implementation;

Requests Governments and international organizations to take appropriate measures to give due consideration to the declaration of the United Nations High-level Dialogue on International Migration and Development,Error: Reference source not found held in New York on 3 and 4 October 2013, in order to ensure that the human rights and human development aspects of women’s migration are adequately integrated into national, regional and international development policy and practice, such as poverty reduction strategies and strategies aimed at accelerating progress towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals;

Encourages the United Nations system and related entities to continue and step up their efforts and promote partnerships with all stakeholders, including civil society organizations, and to coordinate their work in support, as appropriate, of effective implementation of relevant international and regional instruments in order to enhance their impact through concrete positive outcomes for the advancement of women migrant workers’ rights;

Requests the Secretary-General to provide a comprehensive, analytical and thematic report to the General Assembly at its seventieth session on the problem of violence against women migrant workers and on the implementation of the present resolution, taking into account updated information from the organizations of the United Nations system, in particular the International Labour Organization, the United Nations Development Programme, UN-Women and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, as well as the reports of special rapporteurs that refer to the situation of women migrant workers and other relevant sources, such as the International Organization for Migration, including non-governmental organizations.

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

What other versions does this mandate have?

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What’s in this document?

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