We will share the study with our international partners to help establish best practice and coordinated responses both in countries of origin and destination. Five years on, implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action is already overdue. I therefore hope that this Commission, like the Commission on the Status of Women earlier this month, will help smooth the way to a successful outcome to Beijing Plus Five in June. It must lead to a real improvement in women's rights world wide. And we welcome the adoption of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.
Children also suffer from abusive labour practices.
Child labour which is not strictly limited and regulated, and which does not take into account the human and developmental needs of the child, is destructive. It is destructive for individual children. It is damaging for society at large. It stunts childhood and damages health. In depriving children of their education it sentences them to a lifetime of poverty and exploitation.