Violence Against Women Migrant Workers

Encourages concerned Governments, in particular those of sending and receiving countries, to develop, as appropriate, systematic data collection methods and to update and share information on violence against women migrant workers;

Urges concerned Governments, in particular those of sending and receiving countries, to strengthen their national efforts to protect and promote the rights and welfare of women migrant workers, including through sustained bilateral, regional, interregional and international cooperation, by developing strategies and joint action and by taking into account the innovative approaches and experiences of individual Member States;

Also urges concerned Governments, in particular those of sending and receiving countries, to support and allocate appropriate resources for programmes aimed at strengthening preventive action, in particular information for relevant target groups and education and campaigns to increase public awareness of this issue at the national and grassroots levels, in cooperation with non-governmental organizations;

Encourages concerned Governments, in particular those of sending and receiving countries, to support training programmes for public officials dealing with the problem of violence against women migrant workers, in particular law enforcers, to assist women migrant workers who are victims of violence, to provide, in the reporting of such cases and the prosecution of the perpetrators, adequate consular, counselling, legal and welfare services and to consider adopting appropriate legal measures against intermediaries who deliberately encourage the clandestine movement of workers and who exploit women migrant workers;

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,⁸ as well as the Slavery Convention of 1926;⁹

Invites all relevant United Nations human rights treaty bodies, in particular the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, relevant thematic and country rapporteurs, in particular the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on violence against women, its causes and consequences, the Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities and its working groups, within their respective mandates, to address the problem of violence against women migrant workers in their deliberations and findings, with a view to promoting and protecting their rights and welfare;

Invites the Commission on the Status of Women to address the issue of violence against women migrant workers at its forty-second session under the thematic issues on violence against women and/or human rights of women;

Invites the Economic and Social Council and the Commission on Human Rights, at their sessions in 1998, to address the protection and promotion of the rights and welfare of women migrant workers in connection with the five-year review of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action2 and the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;¹⁰

Requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its fifty-fourth session a comprehensive report on the problem of violence against women migrant workers, taking into account the views of Member States and based on the expertise and all available information from the organizations of the United Nations system, in particular the International Labour Organization, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women, the International Organization for Migration and other relevant sources, including non-governmental organizations, as well as to report on the implementation of the present resolution.