A/HRC/4/31 page 9 27. The Special Rapporteur would like to warmly thank all those who responded to the questionnaire. Only a relevant selection of the experiences and initiatives on which information was received is outlined in this report. A. International and regional standards/strategies 28. Due to the rapid development of the organ and tissue trafficking issue, the Special Rapporteur finds it worthwhile to present the different standards and strategies that have been developed both on the international then on the regional level, in order to lay out a general overview on that particular question. 1. International level 29. The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography ensures in its article 3 that different acts and activities must be covered under criminal or penal law as a minimum guarantee. In this specific context, the profitable act of offering, delivering or accepting, by whichever means, a child for the purpose of transfer of organs is expressly included. Furthermore, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime also defines the concept of trafficking in persons in its article 3. The removal of organs is defined as a case of exploitation. 30. The Committee on the Rights of the Child monitors implementation of the two Optional Protocols to the Convention, on the involvement of children in armed conflict and on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. All States parties are obliged to submit regular reports to the Committee on how the rights are being implemented. Additional reports are also submitted for those who have acceded to the Optional Protocols. The Committee cannot consider individual complaints, although child rights may be raised before other committees with competence to consider individual complaints. In this regard, reports from several Member States (Italy, Norway, Turkey, Iceland, Kazakhstan, and Denmark)1 have been submitted to the Committee that have alluded to the question of trafficking of organs in their country. 31. Several allegations were also brought to the Special Rapporteur’s attention over the past years. These mainly cover two specific situations of children trafficked with the aim of removing their organs for transplantation, and of ritual killings in which human parts were offered as sacrifices. On 28 January 2004, an urgent appeal was sent to the Government of Mozambique concerning the situation of five nuns from the Sister Servants of Mary Immaculate who had been working in the Nampula region for over 30 years. According to the source, the nuns began to receive death threats after they had uncovered an organ-trafficking network. The Special Rapporteur expressed his deep concern about the threats and the allegations reported by the nuns (see E/CN.4/2005/78/Add.3). 32. WHO has also addressed this issue. The Special Rapporteur had the opportunity to hold discussions at WHO with the Clinical Procedures Unit in the Department of Essential Health Technologies, which covered the issue of organ and tissue transplantation for the preparation of this report. In 1991, WHO approved a set of Guiding Principles on human organ transplantation