E/CN.4/2002/94 page 3 Executive summary Pursuant to Commission on Human Rights resolution 2001/52, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Ms. Gabriela Rodríguez Pizarro, hereby submits her third report to the Commission at its fifty-eighth session. The report documents her activities and the communications she sent and received, during 2001. It also contains a discussion of the main trends in the protection of migrants’ rights during 2001, including positive developments and situations of concern to the Special Rapporteur. In its mandate to her, the Commission on Human Rights requested the Special Rapporteur to examine ways to overcome the obstacles existing to the full and effective protection of the human rights of this vulnerable group, including obstacles and difficulties for the return of migrants who are non-documented or in an irregular situation. In this report, the Special Rapporteur emphasizes the important developments that have taken place in the formulation of strategies to protect the rights of migrants, and in particular the achievements of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance as regards migration and human rights. In the course of 2001, the Special Rapporteur was able to observe the extreme forms of abuse to which migrants are subjected by trafficking in human beings. In this report, she considers the consequences of trafficking for its victims and emphasizes her concern at the way the trafficking networks operate with impunity while, paradoxically, many States penalize their victims. She considers the challenge of managing migratory flows in an orderly manner, highlighting the need to combat the corruption that goes hand-in-hand with the trafficking, and to draft national legislation that truly does penalize illegal activity of this sort which exposes migrants to the worst forms of abuse. She recommends States to ratify the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, and the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Air and Sea. The report emphasizes the situation of migrant women and unaccompanied minors in the trafficking and smuggling of human beings, and the experience of many young women who emigrate to more developed societies and settle down in the receiving countries because they do not encounter there the patterns of discrimination and repression by other members of their families that they suffered at home. The Special Rapporteur also addresses the connection between asylum and migration, pointing out that the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees needs to be applied more effectively and that human rights must be properly protected as migration is controlled. She observes, furthermore, that the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families is about to enter into force, needing only three more ratifications to do so.