U.N. Report Endorses the Prostitution of Women and Redefines Sex Trafficked Girls as “Minor Sex Workers,” Contravening International Law February 25, 2026 – This week, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee) published an “advance unedited version” of its Concluding observations on the seventh periodic report of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The CEDAW Committee is a body of independent experts that monitors the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), known as the “International Bill of Women’s Rights,” in States Parties’ national laws and policies. In examining whether the Netherlands is fulfilling its obligations under CEDAW to prevent and combat the trafficking and the exploitation of prostitution of women and girls, the CEDAW Committee cast aside myriad international laws by recommending that the Netherlands further decriminalize pimping and brothel-keeping, lift restrictions on the sex trade, and increase means of prostitution by permitting “home-based sex work.” The report also characterizes prostitution as a form of labor (“sex work”) and refers to sex trafficked girls as “minor sex workers.” These observations and recommendations patently violate provisions in CEDAW, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the 1949 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others, which respectively recognize that persons under the age of 18 exploited in the sex trade are by definition sex trafficked children and that prostitution and sex trafficking are incompatible with human dignity. The CEDAW Committee's report also fails to recognize the established, inextricable links between sex trafficking and the system of prostitution, recently reaffirmed in its General Recommendation No. 38, which also underlines that both are severe forms of gender inequality and a threat to international peace and security. No international law, including those mentioned above, gives a definition of the term “sex work.” In past decades, the term has crept into our cultural lexicon – and increasingly, in institutional parlance – representing efforts by the multi-billion-dollar commercial sex industry and its supporters to rebrand prostitution as labor and to push for its legalization and decriminalization. This ideology has no place in the CEDAW Committee or its reports. The Kingdom of the Netherlands has a centuries-old history of promoting the system of prostitution in its country and territories, former colonies, and globally. In 2000, the Dutch government formally legalized the sex trade and lifted the ban on brothel owning (pimping). Today, the vast majority of women in prostitution in the Dutch sex trade are migrant women from Eastern Europe and the global South who are brutally abused at the hands of sex buyers, traffickers, and other third-party exploiters, with impunity. The role of U.N. human rights treaties bodies, like the CEDAW Committee, is to ensure that the Netherlands and other governments fulfil their obligations to enact laws to prevent and end these unspeakable violations against women and girls, including offering comprehensive services to sex trade survivors and holding purchasers of sexual acts accountable for the harm they inflict. In recent months, the media, advocates, and survivors have pushed for the unmasking of American convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s global criminal network. The lack of accountability for the crimes committed against women and girls at the hands of Epstein and other powerful men reveals the very real cost of our institutions and governments normalizing sexual violence and the prostitution of others. It is therefore shocking that the CEDAW Committee report would embrace this dangerous trend and excuse these abuses as a form of “work,” while encouraging the Netherlands to offer additional legal protections to sex buyers, pimps, and brothel-owners. CATW calls on the CEDAW Committee to immediately amend the report and remove all references to “sex work” and to the normalization of the sex trafficking of girls. The Committee must also strike all recommendations that the Netherlands eliminate the few existing legal guardrails that protect marginalized women and girls from being bought and sold in prostitution. Without taking such action, the Committee can no longer profess to uphold international and human rights principles or claim any legitimacy in its mandate to safeguard the fundamental human rights of women and girls to equality and a life free from violence. ### | 
