A/HRC/26/18 shelter, medical and material assistance and counselling, while article 15 requires States to provide victims with free legal aid. The Convention is the only international legally binding instrument that contains an obligation to grant a minimum recovery period of 30 days. Article 15 of the Convention also calls upon States to guarantee compensation for victims in their national laws, while article 29 calls upon them to create anti-trafficking in persons coordinating mechanisms involving all relevant public bodies and civil society actors. 10. In its article 25, the American Convention on Human Rights, to which 23 States of the Americas are parties, provides an important base for the protection of victims of human rights abuse. In 2010, the Organization of American States adopted the Work Plan against Trafficking in Persons in the Western Hemisphere, a non-binding document that sets guidelines to help States to fulfil their obligation to provide victims with restitution, recovery (rehabilitation), compensation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition. 11. In the Asia region, several important initiatives ensure the right to an effective remedy. The human rights mechanisms of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) include the anti-trafficking initiatives conducted by means of the Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children and the Criminal Justice Responses to Trafficking in Persons: ASEAN Practitioner Guidelines (2007). ASEAN has also developed a set of guidelines for the protection of the rights of trafficked children. Moreover, the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime has promoted efforts to combat trafficking, including through workshops, seminars and meetings for technical experts, government officials and civil society organizations on the ratification and implementation of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. 12. In the Africa region, the human rights instruments of the African Union, such as the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the Protocol to the African Charter on the Rights of Women in Africa and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, guarantee individuals and peoples’ rights and impose correlating duties, including specific forms of protection for women and children from forced labour, sexual exploitation and abuse, sale, trafficking and abduction, as well as remedies for redress in the event of human rights violations. In 2006, the African Union adopted the Ouagadougou Action Plan to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings, Especially Women and Children, which is part of the African Union Commission’s Initiative against Trafficking Campaign aimed at enhancing the joint efforts of the African Union and the European Union to fight trafficking. At the subregional level, the Economic Community of West African States has also made efforts to address trafficking, including through the establishment of an antitrafficking unit, and the development in 2009 of the Policy on Protection and Assistance to Victims of Human Trafficking in West Africa. 13. In the Middle East and North Africa region, the League of Arab States has addressed the issue of human trafficking in three conventions: in (a) a treaty on combating transnational organized crime (2012); (b) a convention on combating cybercrimes (2010); and (c) the Arab Charter on Human Rights (2004). Although the Arab Charter on Human Rights does not refer explicitly to the protection of and assistance to victims of trafficking, it does provide for the right to seek legal remedy (art. 12) and the right to compensation (arts. 8 (2), 14 (7) and 19 (2)), and requires States parties to ensure effective remedies for any person whose rights or freedoms have been violated. IV. Common trends and issues 14. In all consultations, there was general agreement that effective remedies remained largely inaccessible, despite the existence of international and regional frameworks. The 5