11.
To assess compliance with article 7 of the Covenant, as well as with article 24,
which mandates special protection for children, the Committee needs to be provided
information on national laws and practice with regard to domestic and other types of
violence against women, including rape. It also needs to know whether the State
party gives access to safe abortion to women who have become pregnant as a result of
rape. The States parties should also provide the Committee with information on
measures to prevent forced abortion or forced sterilization. In States parties where the
practice of genital mutilation exists information on its extent and on measures to
eliminate it should be provided. The information provided by States parties on all
these issues should include measures of protection, including legal remedies, for
women whose rights under article 7 have been violated.
12.
Having regard to their obligations under article 8, States parties should inform
the Committee of measures taken to eliminate trafficking of women and children,
within the country or across borders, and forced prostitution. They must also provide
information on measures taken to protect women and children, including foreign
women and children, from slavery, disguised, inter alia, as domestic or other kinds of
personal service. States parties where women and children are recruited, and from
which they are taken, and States parties where they are received should provide
information on measures, national or international, which have been taken in order to
prevent the violation of women’s and children’s rights.
13.
States parties should provide information on any specific regulation of
clothing to be worn by women in public. The Committee stresses that such
regulations may involve a violation of a number of rights guaranteed by the Covenant,
such as: article 26, on non-discrimination; article 7, if corporal punishment is
imposed in order to enforce such a regulation; article 9, when failure to comply with
the regulation is punished by arrest; article 12, if liberty of movement is subject to
such a constraint; article 17, which guarantees all persons the right to privacy without
arbitrary or unlawful interference; articles 18 and 19, when women are subjected to
clothing requirements that are not in keeping with their religion or their right of
self-expression; and, lastly, article 27, when the clothing requirements conflict with
the culture to which the woman can lay a claim.
14.
With regard to article 9, States parties should provide information on any laws
or practices which may deprive women of their liberty on an arbitrary or unequal
basis, such as by confinement within the house (see general comment No. 8,
paragraph 1).
15.
As regards articles 7 and 10, States parties must provide all information
relevant to ensuring that the rights of persons deprived of their liberty are protected on
equal terms for men and women. In particular, States parties should report on
whether men and women are separated in prisons and whether women are guarded
only by female guards. States parties should also report about compliance with the
rule that accused juvenile females shall be separated from adults and on any
difference in treatment between male and female persons deprived of liberty, such as
access to rehabilitation and education programmes and to conjugal and family visits.
Pregnant women who are deprived of their liberty should receive humane treatment