UN report sounds alarm on justice failures facing women in Aruba, Curaçao, St. Maarten

GENEVA-GREAT BAY--A new United Nations review of the Kingdom of the Netherlands has placed several justice-related issues in Aruba, Curaçao, and St. Maarten under sharp scrutiny, citing barriers to legal aid, gaps in victim protection, limited shelter access, and weaknesses in anti-trafficking safeguards that continue to affect women across the Caribbean parts of the Kingdom.

In its latest concluding observations, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) states that women in the Caribbean parts of the Kingdomface persistent barriers to effective access to justice, including obstacles in securing legal aid and the financial burden of personal contributions and cost orders, even where state legal aid is technically available. The Committee specifically notes that these barriers disproportionately affect marginalized women, women in family disputes marked by gendered power imbalances, and women in the Caribbean parts of the Kingdom.

The Committee recommends that legal aid services be made accessible, gender-sensitive, affordable, and, where necessary, free of charge. It further calls for reducing or eliminating personal contributions and cost orders for women, a recommendation that speaks directly to the practical reality that legal rights can remain out of reach when the cost of seeking protection or remedy is too high.

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The report also links justice access to immigration vulnerability. It notes concern that fear of deportation prevents undocumented migrant women, including survivors of gender-based violence and trafficking, from reporting abuse or seeking remedies. In response, the Committee urges the Kingdom to ensure that reporting violence does not result in deportation, administrative detention, or other adverse consequences under immigration or administrative law.

On gender-based violence against women, the Committee says delays in investigation and prosecution remain a serious concern, alongside limited access for survivors to compensation, specialized trauma care, legal aid, and psychosocial support services. It recommends the timely investigation and prosecution of all forms of gender-based violence against women and calls for adequate resources to ensure that survivors receive effective remedies.

For the Caribbean parts of the Kingdom specifically, the Committee highlights what it describes as limited specialized and accessible victim support services, insufficient capacity within law enforcement authorities, and gaps in the coordination of prevention efforts. It recommends strengthening specialized victim support services, expanding law enforcement capacity, and improving the coordination of gender-based violence and femicide prevention in Aruba, Curaçao, and St. Maarten.

The Committee also calls for stronger overall coordination of gender-based violence strategies and responses across the Kingdom. Its recommendations include recruiting specialized investigators, ensuring consistent trauma-informed training for law enforcement, reducing investigation delays, and removing barriers to reporting by strengthening police responses and addressing stereotypes and victim-blaming attitudes.

In the area of shelters, the report notes a persistent limited number and capacity of safe shelters, resulting in women being turned away or, in serious-risk situations, being referred to alternatives such as hotels that may not adequately meet their safety or specialized support needs. It also flags unequal access to shelters for women without secure residence status.  

The Committee recommends increasing the number and capacity of safe shelters to meet demand, ensuring equal access regardless of residence status, and removing user fees for access to safe shelters. For small island communities such as St. Maarten, where support systems can already be limited by scale and capacity, those recommendations underscore the importance of ensuring that women facing immediate danger have access to real protection, not temporary stopgaps.

The report also examines trafficking in women and girls and the exploitation of prostitution across the Kingdom. It raises concern about the persistent prevalence of trafficking for sexual and labor exploitation, inadequate victim identification, limited effectiveness of investigations, low prosecution and conviction rates, lenient sentences, and lengthy proceedings. It further notes that anti-trafficking functions being tied to immigration police can discourage undocumented women from reporting exploitation, because victims may perceive those systems as extensions of migration control.

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CEDAW recommends strengthening early victim identification through systematic screening, specialized training for frontline professionals, and gender-sensitive identification procedures. It also calls for stronger investigations and prosecutions, more resources for law enforcement, shorter case-processing times, and the consistent application of dissuasive prison sentences for traffickers.

The Committee also calls for institutional separation between anti-trafficking functions and immigration enforcement, along with safe reporting channels to ensure victims do not face deportation or detention for coming forward. It says access to specialized assistance, including shelters, psychosocial support, legal aid, and temporary residence permits, should not depend on a victim’s willingness or ability to cooperate with prosecutors.

One of the report’s most pointed trafficking-related findings concerns Curaçao, where the Committee says only foreign women are permitted to engage in regulated sex work through temporary permits. It states that this discriminatory permit system renders those women more vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation. The Committee recommends abolishing that system, ensuring that sex work regulations do not discriminate based on nationality or migration status, and strengthening protections for all women sex workers.

Beyond Curaçao, the Committee also raises concern that repressive local sex work policies can reduce licensed workplaces, ban home-based sex work, increase dependence on brothel operators, and push independent sex workers into the illegal sector, where they may have less access to protection, health care, and social services. It recommends reversing such policies where they create unsafe conditions and adopting victim-centered, confidential reporting procedures, as well as better support and exit programs for women and girls seeking to leave sex work.

Taken together, the Committee’s justice-related findings amount to a broad warning that formal legal protections are not enough if women cannot afford to access them, cannot safely report abuse, cannot find shelter in a crisis, or remain exposed to fragmented victim support and weak enforcement systems. For the Caribbean parts of the Kingdom, the report’s message is clear: access to justice must be practical, protection systems must be specialized and accessible, and anti-trafficking responses must be safer, stronger, and more victim-centered.

The report can be downloaded below.

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