Call to Action 

Over the past 30 years, states have steadily laid the groundwork for achieving a truly free, safe, just, and gender-equal society for women and girls. This year’s session of the Commission on the Status of Women will celebrate past progress while focusing on the proactive, forward-looking approach that anticipates and addresses emerging challenges and opportunities for gender equality and women’s empowerment in the years ahead. 

Member States must be anticipatory and adaptive in response to evolving social, economic, technological, and environmental factors that may affect women and girls globally. They must build on the tradition of existing international instruments and leverage the power of newly adopted international laws and frameworks to guarantee comprehensive and inclusive progress towards gender equality. 

One emerging challenge is the expansion of criminal activities, including human trafficking and technology-facilitated sexual exploitation, into the digital sphere. While internet access and usage have rapidly increased, efforts to ensure online safety, education, prevention and combating measures have not kept pace with technological advancements. As a result, women and girls remain particularly vulnerable to highly skilled criminal entities and networks. Traffickers have adapted their modus operandi to the online spaces, operating beyond national borders and across multiple jurisdictions, taking advantage of the digital realm’s anonymity, extensive reach, and swift communication capabilities. These factors, combined with the pre-existing vulnerabilities of potential victims, make combating online trafficking for sexual exploitation increasingly complex and requiring urgent attention.

The 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action outlined twelve critical areas of concern, which are today compounded by the growing phenomenon of human trafficking and sexual exploitation through digital means. This calls for a holistic approach that addresses these longstanding issues in their traditional forms and incorporates the challenges posed by technology.

In alignment with the critical areas of concern outlined in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the current global challenges concerning the exploitation of women and girls, we put forward the following recommendations:

• • Poverty and Economy: Prioritize economic empowerment and social safety nets for victims and women and girls at-risk. Member States must invest in comprehensive poverty alleviation programs for marginalized communities, as most exploitative situations begin with the search for better opportunities.
  • Education and Training of Women: Develop and promote comprehensive digital literacy, STEM education, and awareness programs that educate women and girls on online safety, their rights in digital spaces, and the tools available to report abuse. Member States should ensure these initiatives are accessible to all, especially marginalized and vulnerable groups, in line with the Beijing Platform for Action’s call for education and training in technology and communication.
  • Health: Ensure comprehensive healthcare services are accessible to all, particularly women victims of crimes, recognizing the severe physical and mental health impacts of human trafficking and digital sexual exploitation. Healthcare systems should have direct access to multidisciplinary response teams to coordinate immediate and long-term victim assistance. Integrating screening tools into routine assessments can help identify potential victims, while clear referral pathways and sustained medical, psychological, and legal support are essential for recovery and reintegration. National protocols, reinforced and refined through regular case reviews and inter-agency collaboration, will strengthen protection and improve victim outcomes.
  • Violence against Women and Human Rights of Women: Strengthen legal frameworks to prevent and address sexual exploitation of women and girls, including technology-facilitated sexual exploitation, ensuring that Member States laws are in full alignment with international human rights standards, all relevant legal instruments and the Beijing Declaration’s commitment to promote and protect the human rights of women.Moreover, recognize and tackle the demand for sexual services by implementing accountability mechanisms through laws and policies that target the purchasers of sexual services, either online or offline, alongside programs that challenge harmful societal norms and behaviors that perpetuate the demand for sexual exploitation.
  • Armed Conflict: Safeguard refugees and displaced populations, who are often women and children and frequently victims of various crimes. International cooperation must be strengthened to track and dismantle trafficking networks that exploit conflict-related instability, ensuring the prosecution of sexual exploitation as a war crime or crime against humanity when applicable. A multidisciplinary approach should engage all relevant stakeholders – including governmental institutions, civil society, and vetted private actors – to implement clear referral pathways, standardized vetting systems, and accessible reporting tools. Additionally, screening individuals’ vulnerabilities and assessing their risk of exploitation must be prioritized to enhance protection for refugees.
  • Power and Decision-Making: Meaningfully engage survivors in the development of laws, programs, and support systems, ensuring that responses are truly nuanced, effective, and tailored to the needs of those directly affected. In many countries, services for the victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation are almost exclusively provided by third parties – non-governmental organizations or volunteer organizations. We recommend that Member States engage survivors meaningfully and have a victim-centered approach in shaping national, regional and international policies and ecosystems.
  • Institutional Mechanisms for the Advancement of Women: Provide adequate resources and empower existing dedicated institutions to develop and implement inclusive, evidence-based, and responsive strategies that specifically address the needs of victims and survivors, while also establishing a foundation for creating similar entities in regions that currently lack them.
  • Mass Media: Strengthen regulations to prevent the misuse of media platforms for the promotion of human trafficking and digital sexual exploitation, recognize and safeguard all facets of bodily autonomy, including both real images and AI-generated content. Non-consensual sharing of intimate images, like most offenses facilitated by technology, is not confined to one country, creating the pressing requirement to facilitate international cooperation between states on evidence gathering, sanctioning, extradition of perpetrators, and prosecution of these crimes. Furthermore, Member States must guarantee swift removal of image-based sexual abuse material from technology platforms and websites, allowing prospects of full recovery for survivors. 
  • Environment: Create sustainable and safe environments for women and girls, as environmental factors significantly contribute to their exposure to various risks. Climate change and environmental disasters, such as floods, droughts, and storms, along with resource scarcity, often lead to the displacement of populations, leaving those already vulnerable more susceptible to exploitation. Displaced populations, with limited access to basic needs such as food, shelter, and healthcare, are at greater risk of being trafficked or coerced into harmful situations. For instance, such a pattern impacting the trafficking phenomenon has been identified in Africa.
  • The Girl-Child: Pay special attention to the unique challenges faced by girls, as recent years have witnessed a concerning rise in the number of young girls identified as victims of sexual exploitation. Ensure proper sanctioning of the creation, dissemination and consumption of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), online sexual exploitation of children (OSEC), online sexual abuse of children (OSAC) and trafficking via information and communication technology.

Addressing the critical issue of technology-facilitated human trafficking and sexual exploitation requires a unified, global effort that adapts to the evolving digital landscape and advancements while safeguarding the rights and dignity of women and girls. By strengthening legal and social frameworks, through coordinated actions, fostering international cooperation and engaging all sectors of society, Member States can create a world where technology serves to protect and uplift women and girls, rather than exploit them.

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