E/CN.4/2002/73/Add.2 page 53 214. With regard to child victims of sexual practices perpetrated in closed communities or other allegedly religious movements, States should establish the offence of non-assistance to an at-risk person, if there is no such provision in their legislation, in order to be able to prosecute individuals who, in any capacity, have parental authority or responsibility for a child, including medical or paramedical personnel, for failing or refusing to provide care. 215. Governments should adopt strategies and introduce services to help women and effectively protect them against infringements of their right to life, especially in regard to honour crimes, in order to prevent female victims from being held in unlawful detention in an attempt to protect them. Some practices in particular violate the right to life and are thus offences against public order and not solely against the victim. States should be encouraged to prosecute offenders even if the victim or her family does not file a complaint and forgives the wrongdoer. No form of compromise or compensation, including pecuniary compensation, is acceptable in this respect. 216. With a view to achieving lasting improvements, action to eliminate violence against women should target not the effects of the phenomenon but its root causes. As rightly pointed out, eliminating violence against women has to extend far beyond violence as a visible manifestation of a deep-seated, multilayered problem. One author gives the example of female infanticide, whose root causes lie in the absence of a social security system, which forces parents to rely on sons to provide for their old age.282 This and many other examples show that a strategy for eliminating cultural and religious customs and traditions is possible and that defeatism is not at all justified. Action by States in this regard should be aimed at identifying the root causes, which can foster the expansion of such traditional practices, especially in disadvantaged areas. 217. Lastly, it is important to note in this connection that women who are physically abused by their husbands for reasons linked to cultural or religious traditions should enjoy financial independence. The State has an important preventive and punitive role to play in this respect, in particular when tradition or religion is invoked to justify violence in the family. It is especially important to recognize that the rights of women as individuals have to take precedence over respect for privacy and family autonomy.283 B. International measures 1. Prevention (a) Cooperation between States, international bodies and organizations 218. The causes of harmful cultural traditions and traditional practices that are detrimental to the health of women and girls can generally be traced to the same roots, irrespective of cultural and religious diversity. Cooperation between States and relevant international organizations is therefore essential in the areas of prevention and protection. By way of example, the Plan of Action which was formulated by the Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities at its forty-sixth session on the basis of the deliberations at the two regional seminars in Africa and Asia provides a useful operating framework.284 219. Action by relevant international organizations such as WHO should be strengthened with the aim of abolishing practices such as female genital mutilation. A strategy against the medicalization of this practice across the world should be implemented under its auspices. WHO