A/HRC/36/43 traveling to courtrooms, food and accommodation while the case is ongoing, and indirect costs such as loss of earnings. C. Institutional and procedural barriers 1. Legislative and policy barriers Absence of legal protection 29. The international legal framework prohibiting contemporary forms of slavery imposes on States the obligation to adopt stand-alone domestic legislation criminalizing such practices and to ensure that the penalties established are adequate and commensurate with their gravity, beyond any provisions they may have in place criminalizing trafficking in persons. However, to date, a significant number of States parties to the instruments prohibiting contemporary forms of slavery have not yet put in place provisions criminalizing forced labour, servitude and/or slavery as stand-alone offences at the domestic level. 25 Furthermore, the legal definitions developed in some States are often inadequate to enable enforcement officials to detect contemporary patterns of exploitation. The absence of clear definitions or vagueness in the law constitute major impediments for law enforcement officials to detect cases of contemporary forms of slavery and gather appropriate evidence to prove an offence has occurred in order to identify and protect victims. 30. In order to guarantee to victims of contemporary forms of slavery adequate and effective remedies, legislation prohibiting such practices should make available as remedies not only criminal proceedings but also civil compensation. 26 The burden of proof to bring criminal charges is set at a high threshold, which makes prosecution in some cases difficult. Often, prosecution is not possible owing to a lack of evidence; therefore, that avenue is only available in those few cases where the perpetrator has been convicted. Where there is no specific civil remedy stipulated by law for contemporary forms of slavery, the only option open to victims is existing civil actions, which are often inadequate to address the nature of such forms of exploitation. 31. Finally, the non-regulation of certain occupations or their exclusion from national labour laws make workers, particularly women, vulnerable to contemporary forms of slavery and constitutes an obstacle to their equal access to justice. In its general recommendation No. 26 (2008) on women migrant workers, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, considering that domestic work is one of the occupations in which migrant women dominate, stated that in countries of destination, such occupations may be excluded from legal definitions of work, thereby depriving women of a variety of legal protections. Legislation and policies that limit victims’ access to justice 32. In some countries, legislation and policies exist that facilitate contemporary forms of slavery and create barriers for victims to access justice and remedy. The kafala system, which is in place in a number of countries in the Middle East, creates a power imbalance in the employment relationship and leaves workers with little bargaining power and vulnerable to exploitation. Migrant workers who decide to flee from an abusive employer are classified as irregular migrants and may be subjected to arrest, detention and deportation or in some cases falsely accused by their employers of having committed a crime. Furthermore, the criminalization of illegal entry to a country, illegal working or overstaying the period of a visa, denies protection to victims of contemporary forms of 25 26 10 Submission to the Special Rapporteur by Jean Allain. See working paper of the organization FLEX entitled “Access to Compensation for Victims of Human Trafficking” (July 2016). Available from www.labourexploitation.org/sites/default/files/publications/DWP-Compensation-F.pdf.