A/HRC/59/62 regulates the lives of tens of millions of migrant workers, including domestic workers, often from African and South Asian countries, who seek job opportunities in Middle Eastern countries. This system ties migrant workers’ immigration status to their employers or sponsors and has contributed, in many cases, to workers being trapped in hazardous and exploitative conditions of labour and experiencing a range of related human rights violations. Women domestic workers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse because of the kafalah system and the fact that they live in employers’ homes, which are not covered by labour regulation systems. Such domestic workers often experience violence, including sexual violence. The kafalah system reportedly reflects deep-rooted hierarchies based on race, gender, colour, religion and class, which are legacies of historical patterns of slavery in the region. Despite some reforms to the system, many migrant workers remain locked in conditions of oppression and exploitation.30 23. Complex, systemic and intersectional patterns of discrimination particularly affect women from racially and ethnically marginalized communities in the criminal justice system in the United States, including women who have received the death sentence or who are at risk of being sentenced to death. The Special Rapporteur received information indicating that systemic racism and intersectional discrimination made women from marginalized racial and ethnic groups, including women of African descent and Latina women, more vulnerable to adverse life experiences, including living in poverty, having a disability and being exposed to gender-based violence. Research suggests that these adverse life experiences are common among women who have received the death penalty. Women from marginalized racial and ethnic groups also commonly face the compounded impact of racial and gender biases within the criminal justice system, shaped by legacies of enslavement and segregation, which can contribute to them receiving the death penalty, even if they have no prior violent criminal history.31 24. The Special Rapporteur received information about discriminatory laws targeting LGBTQ+ persons being introduced in the Russian Federation, with distinct and compounding effects on those experiencing discrimination and marginalization on multiple and intersecting grounds. Such laws, including a ban on gender-affirming therapy and the Supreme Court banning the LGBTQ+ movement and designating it as “extremist” and extending a “gay propaganda ban” to prohibit any offline and online “promotion of nontraditional sexual relations” to those of all ages. The introduction and expansion of discriminatory laws and the interlinked and mutually reinforcing social stereotyping and hostility that accompanies such legislative repression have a disproportionately harmful impact on individuals who face additional forms of marginalization based on gender, ethnicity, religion, age, or regional origin. These overlapping vulnerabilities, experienced differently by a diverse range of persons, result in compounded exclusion, heightened risks and structural invisibility.32 25. Roma persons across Europe experience systemic exclusion in education, employment, healthcare, including sexual and reproductive health services, and housing. Racialized stereotyping, hate speech and hate-motivated violence further exacerbate their marginalization, revealing the deep-rooted racial injustices that they face. Roma persons face this structural, institutional and intersectional discrimination and social exclusion on multiple grounds including ethnicity, race, class, traditional work and occupation, descent, migration status and/or education. Roma women, young people, older persons, LGBTQ+ persons and persons with disabilities face compounded manifestations of this systemic discrimination based on age, gender, sexual orientation and disability. For example, Roma 30 31 32 8 See CERD/C/QAT/CO/22-23; CERD/C/KWT/CO/21-24; CERD/C/ARE/CO/18-21; CERD/C/LBN/CO/23-24; CERD/C/SAU/CO/10-11; Katie McQue, “Every day I cry’: 50 women talk about life as a domestic worker under the Gulf’s kafala system”, The Guardian, 25 April 2024; and submission from Amman Centre for Human Rights. See A/HRC/56/68/Add.1; and submission from Advocates for Human Rights, Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide and World Coalition Against the Death Penalty. See communications RUS 20/2023, RUS 28/2023 and RUS 11/2024 (available from https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/Tmsearch/TMDocuments). See also submission from Coming Out, Crisis Group “Marem” and Northern Caucasus SOS Crisis Group. GE.25-07755