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been ratified by 15 States: Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cape Verde,
Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Mexico, Morocco, Philippines, Senegal, Seychelles, Sri Lanka
and Uganda. It has not yet entered into force.
33.
The Special Rapporteur notes that the legal instruments which are relevant to the
fulfilment of her mandate and thus to the protection and prevention of violations of the human
rights of migrants include the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized
Crime and its Additional Protocols (Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in
Persons, especially Women and Children, and Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by
Land, Sea and Air). At the time when the present report was completed, 124 States had signed
the Convention, 81 States had acceded to the Protocol against Trafficking in Persons and 78
States had acceded to the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants. The Special Rapporteur
notes that the definitions of terms in the two Protocols are particularly relevant to the focus of the
mandate in this regard. Under the Protocols, “trafficking in persons” means 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 for benefits to achieve the
consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation, while
“smuggling of migrants” means the procurement, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a
financial or other material benefit, of the illegal entry of a person into a State party of which the
person is not a national or a permanent resident.
34.
The Special Rapporteur also wishes to refer to the Declaration on the Human Rights of
Individuals Who are not Nationals of the Country in which They Live, adopted by the
General Assembly in its resolution 40/144 of 13 December 1985. Its 10 articles embody basic
principles for the protection of the human rights of human beings, regardless, inter alia, of their
national origin.
III. METHODS OF WORK
35.
Since her appointment, the Special Rapporteur has established various types of
communication with Governments, with governmental and non-governmental organizations and
with migrants themselves. She carried out her first mission in this capacity and, in this report,
presents a programme of visits, as requested by the Commission on Human Rights in its
resolution 2000/48.
A. Type of communications received by the Special Rapporteur
36.
The Special Rapporteur receives a large number of communications containing
information on alleged violations of human rights, which, in these particular cases, affect
individuals who are not nationals of the country in which they live. Non-governmental
organizations are the main source of these communications, but they also come from migrants
directly, from intergovernmental organizations, from other United Nations human rights
mechanisms and even, in some cases, from Governments. In individual and group cases, the
Special Rapporteur is open to transmitting joint appeals with other special Commission
mechanisms, as has already been done on other occasions. The present report describes in detail
the urgent appeals which the Special Rapporteur has transmitted during the period under review.