A/HRC/15/20* 7. Trafficking and domestic servitude 59. Trafficking is one path into domestic servitude. International law defines trafficking as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.28 Slavery, practices similar to slavery and servitude are among the worst forms of exploitation that can result from trafficking; the victim’s “consent” to such exploitation is immaterial.29 60. While links with other forms of organized violent crime cannot be excluded, trafficking into domestic servitude usually takes places under the cover of activities that seem legal or enjoy widespread social acceptance. Agents recruiting domestic workers become perpetrators of trafficking, if they deliberately deceive their clients about the conditions of work or engage in illegal practices of control (such as the withholding of passports), while knowing that such practices will result in the exploitation of their recruits.30 61. Parents can also become complicit in the trafficking of their own children if they hand over their child to a third party knowing that the child will be exploited in domestic work. In its latest concluding comments on Pakistan, for instance, the Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed “concern at the growing number of children trafficked internally, sometimes sold by their own parents or forced into marriage, sexual exploitation or domestic servitude” (CRC/C/PAK/CO/3-4, para. 95). C. Root causes of domestic servitude 62. Domestic servitude does not emerge in a vacuum but is linked to wider patterns of social and economic exclusion, discrimination and, most importantly, a lack of State protection. 1. Feminized poverty and gender discrimination 63. The availability of domestic help has contributed to women’s empowerment, because it has allowed many women to reconcile their professional aspirations with their gendered social obligations towards their children and family. It is therefore a bitter irony that the women and girls who made such advances possible are often subjected to a form of exploitation that is gender-based at its heart. 64. Feminized poverty pushes women and girls into domestic work and makes them easy to exploit. Women, who often carry the burden of providing for children, suffer disproportionally from cuts to welfare programmes and essential public services in a situation of economic crisis and budget cuts. In many countries, the collapse of entire agricultural sectors, often linked to inequitable terms of trade, has driven also women and girls into rural–urban or international migrations. With the supply of cheap, desperate 28 29 30 GE.10-15169 Protocol to Suppress, Punish and Prevent Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, art. 3. See also the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, art. 4. Cf. ibid. See Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, mission to Lebanon, E/CN.4/2006/62/Add.3, paras. 28–33. 13