Strengthening the United Nations crime prevention and criminal justice programme, in particular its technical cooperation capacity A/RES/69/197 Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, 23 and with national laws and legislation, while effectively protecting the rights and respecting the dignity of smuggled migrants and internationally recognized principles of non-discrimination and other applicable obligations under relevant international law, taking into account the special needs of women, children, especially when unaccompanied, and persons with disabilities and older persons, and in this regard calls upon the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to continue its technical assistance to Member States in accordance with the above-mentioned Protocol; 19. Encourages Member States to ensure that, in investigating and prosecuting the smuggling of migrants, the concurrent undertaking of financial investigations is considered, with a view to tracing, freezing and confiscating proceeds acquired through that crime, and to consider the smuggling of migrants to be a predicate offence of money-laundering; 20. Emphasizes the importance of preventing and combating all forms of trafficking in persons, and in this regard expresses its concern about the activities of transnational and national organized criminal groups and others who profit from such crimes, including for the purpose of organ removal, and calls upon Member States to strengthen national efforts to combat all forms of trafficking in persons and to protect and assist the victims of trafficking in accordance with all relevant legal obligations and in collaboration with international organizations, civil society and the private sector; 21. Invites Member States to strengthen the crime prevention and criminal justice response to the gender-related killing of women and girls, in particular measures to support the capacity of Member States to prevent, investigate, prosecute and punish all forms of such crime; 22. Urges the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to continue to provide within its mandate technical assistance to Member States, upon their request, to combat money-laundering and the financing of terrorism through the Global Programme against Money-Laundering, Proceeds of Crime and the Financing of Terrorism, in accordance with United Nations-related instruments and international standards, including, where applicable, standards and relevant initiatives of regional, interregional and multilateral organizations and intergovernmental bodies against money-laundering, inter alia and as appropriate, the Financial Action Task Force, in accordance with national legislation; 23. Urges Member States to strengthen bilateral, regional and international cooperation to enable the return of assets illicitly acquired from corruption to the countries of origin, upon their request, in accordance with the provisions of the United Nations Convention against Corruption for asset recovery, in particular chapter V, requests the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, within its existing mandate, to continue to provide assistance to bilateral, regional and international efforts for that purpose, and also urges Member States to combat and penalize corruption, as well as the laundering of its proceeds; 24. Welcomes the progress achieved by the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Conference of the States Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption in the implementation of their respective mandates, and calls upon States parties to give full effect to the resolutions adopted by those bodies; _______________ 23 10/14 United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 2241, No. 39574.