A/HRC/56/48 Role of civil society organizations 33. The ability of civil society organizations and frontline service providers to have an impact on the design and implementation of policies and to assist victims depends on the approach of engagement of the States, and their exposure to harassment and attacks by sex industry advocates and criminal networks,156 as well as access to funding. In some countries, organizations have experienced the withdrawal of funding for adopting abolitionist approaches or articulating victims’ needs to single-sex services. VII. Applicable international human rights standards A. International legal framework 34. Early international agreements157 linked prostitution to traffic, slavery and slaverylike practices with a view to selling or exchanging a human being through control and ownership, often accompanied by the threat of violence. Prostitution is also incompatible with the international standards for decent work.158 35. A year after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which established dignity, equality and freedom as key principles and fundamental rights, the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others recognized prostitution as being incompatible with the dignity and the worth of the human person. It also prohibited the “exploitation of prostitution” in all forms, including procuring and exploiting the prostitution of another person, and knowingly managing or financing places for this purpose, to which no person may consent (arts. 1-4). 36. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women requires States parties to take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to suppress all forms of trafficking in women and exploitation of prostitution of women, using the same language that made third parties responsible in the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others. It introduced “all forms”, thereby acknowledging that new forms would emerge and should be eliminated. As such, it recognized the prostitution of women as a form of discrimination against women within the meaning of article 1 of the Convention, obliging States to adopt all measures to eliminate it. 37. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women expanded the interpretation of the definition of discrimination against women to include gender-based violence against women in article 1 of the Convention.159 In its general recommendation No. 38 (2020), the Committee acknowledged trafficking and the exploitation of prostitution of women as a phenomenon rooted in structural, sex-based discrimination, constituting genderbased violence.160 The general recommendation built on the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (the Trafficking in Persons Protocol), reinforcing the indivisible link between trafficking and sexual exploitation, calling upon States to take all appropriate measures to suppress all forms of trafficking and exploitation of prostitution of women.161 In its general recommendation, the Committee made it clear that article 6 should be read as an indivisible provision linking trafficking and sexual exploitation, and explicitly recognized that international law on 156 157 158 159 160 161 Submission by Not Buying It. First Convention on Slavery (1936) and Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices White Slave Traffic, 1910 and the Covenant of the League of Nations of 1919. ILO, Tripartite Meeting of Experts on the Measurement of Decent Work, 2008 and Sustainable Development Goal 8. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, general comment No. 19 (1992), para. 6. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, general comment No. 38 (2020), para. 10. Ibid. 13