Sex Trade Survivors and Women’s and Human Rights Advocates Call on U.N. Committee to Amend Report on the Netherlands

March 4, 2026 – More than 1,300 women’s and human rights advocates, including sex trade survivors, from over 40 countries signed an open letter expressing outrage over the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee)’s recommendations to the Netherlands to expand and strengthen its sex trade.

In its recently published report, Concluding observations on the seventh periodic report of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the CEDAW Committee advises the Dutch government to eliminate the few restrictions the country imposes on its brothels, decriminalized in 2000, and also lift the ban on “home-based sex work,” among other unfathomable recommendations that would empower exploiters and increase sexual exploitation.

Elsewhere in the report, the Committee characterizes sex trafficked girls as “minor sex workers,” contravening a number of international laws and failing to recognize the established, inextricable links between sex trafficking, the sex trade, and the demand for prostitution.

The signatories of the letter are asking the CEDAW Committee to immediately modify the report by removing all references to “sex work,” “minor sex workers,” “forced prostitution,” and any and all recommendations that encourage the Netherlands to legally protect perpetrators, sex buyers, brothel owners, traffickers and other exploiters, at the expense of women’s and girls’ lives.

The letter urges the CEDAW Committee to fulfill its mandate to uphold the fundamental rights of women and girls to equality, dignity, and to live a life free from violence.

The letter is still collecting signatures here.

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