Trafficking in women and girls A/RES/67/145 17. Urges Governments to develop educational and training programmes and policies and to consider, as appropriate, enacting legislation aimed at preventing sex tourism and trafficking, giving special emphasis to the protection of young women and children; 18. Encourages Member States to strengthen national programmes and to engage in bilateral, subregional, regional and international cooperation, including by forging regional initiatives or plans of action, 25 to address the problem of trafficking in persons through, inter alia, the enhancement of information-sharing, sex- and age-disaggregated data, specific data collection and other technical capacities, and mutual legal assistance, as well as the combating of corruption and laundering of proceeds derived from trafficking, including for purposes of commercial sexual exploitation, and to ensure, as appropriate, that such agreements and initiatives are particularly responsive to the problem of trafficking as it affects women and girls; 19. Calls upon all Governments to criminalize all forms of trafficking in persons, recognizing its increasing occurrence for purposes of sexual exploitation, commercial sexual exploitation and abuse, sex tourism and forced labour, and to bring to justice and punish the offenders and intermediaries involved, including public officials involved with trafficking in persons, whether local or foreign, through the competent national authorities, either in the country of origin of the offender or in the country in which the abuse occurs, in accordance with due process of law, as well as to penalize persons in authority found guilty of sexually assaulting victims of trafficking in their custody; 20. Urges Governments to take all appropriate measures to ensure that victims of trafficking are not penalized or prosecuted for acts committed as a direct result of being trafficked and that they do not suffer from revictimization as a result of actions taken by Government authorities, and encourages Governments to prevent, within their legal framework and in accordance with national policies, victims of trafficking in persons from being prosecuted for their illegal entry or residence; 21. Invites Governments to consider setting up or strengthening a national coordinating mechanism, for example, a national rapporteur or an inter-agency body, with the participation of civil society, as appropriate, including non-governmental organizations, to encourage the exchange of information and to report on data, root causes, factors and trends in trafficking in persons, especially women and girls, and to include data on victims of trafficking disaggregated by sex and age; 22. Encourages Governments and relevant United Nations bodies, from within existing resources, to take appropriate measures to raise public awareness of the issue of trafficking in persons, particularly women and girls, including the factors that make women and girls vulnerable to trafficking; to discourage, with a view to eliminating, the demand that fosters all forms of exploitation, including _______________ 25 Such as the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime, the Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative against Trafficking, the Action Plan for the Asia-Pacific region of the Asian Regional Initiative against Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (see A/C.3/55/3, annex), the initiatives of the European Union on a comprehensive European policy and programmes on trafficking in human beings, as expressed most recently in the European Union plan on best practices, standards and procedures for combating and preventing trafficking in human beings, adopted in December 2005, the activities of the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Convention on Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Women and Children for Prostitution, the Organization of American States Meeting of National Authorities on Trafficking in Persons, and the activities of the International Labour Organization and the International Organization for Migration in this field. 7/10