Anti Slavery & Anti Trafficking Law.

Anti Slavery & Anti Trafficking Law.

Human trafficking is often called modern-day slavery. There is an overlap between the legal terminology used for slavery and that used for human trafficking. The history of the anti-slavery movement is instructive as it is connected to the development of international human rights law and anti-human trafficking law.

? The Treaty for the Suppression of the Slave Trade was signed in London in December 1841 by the Austrian Empire, France, the UK, the Kingdom of Prussia and the Russian Empire. This occurred after August 1st 1834 when Slavery was abolished in the British West Indies, a date still celebrated in Trinidad and Tobago as Emancipation Day.

? The first international agreement to use the terminology “traffic” was the International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic signed in Paris in 1910 which dealt with slavery and human trafficking.?

? The Slavery, Servitude, Forced Labour and Similar Institutions and Practices Convention of 1926 and the International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children of 1933 continued advancing the legal principles of anti-slavery and anti-trafficking law.

? The 1926 Slavery Convention defines slavery in Article 1 as follows :?

“(1) Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised.

(2) The slave trade includes all acts involved in the capture, acquisition or disposal of a person with intent to reduce him to slavery; all acts involved in the acquisition of a slave with a view to selling or exchanging him; all acts of disposal by sale or exchange of a slave acquired with a view to being sold or exchanged, and, in general, every act of trade or transport in slaves”

The Rome Statute that establishes the International Criminal Court which entered into force in 2002 recognizes slavery as a crime against humanity in Article 7 (1) (g) and states in Article 7(2) (c):?

“(c) "Enslavement" means the exercise of any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership over a person and includes the exercise of such power in the course of trafficking in persons, in particular women and children;”

The Palermo Protocol to suppress Trafficking in Persons which was adopted in the year 2000 references slavery in the definition of trafficking in Persons in Article 3 (a) as follows :

“Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs”

We can see that there has been an evolution in the law from the earlier Slavery conventions to the modern international law that establishes slavery as a crime against humanity and defines human trafficking as a related yet distinct crime.?

? The Rome statute of the ICC recognizes that Enslavement may occur in the course of trafficking in persons. While many cases of slavery are also cases of human trafficking, not all cases of human trafficking fall under the legal definition of slavery. The scope of anti-trafficking law is wide and constantly developing and includes novel cases where the powers attaching to “ownership” of a person may not be clearly present.

? In the case of sex workers being trafficked, in some cases the victims of trafficking are brainwashed into thinking that their trafficker or pimp is their “boyfriend” who takes care of them, this is called the Romeo trafficker or Romeo pimp. In such a case the powers attached to ownership may not be clearly present although the mental bondage that such a sex worker undergoes makes them completely dependent on their trafficker and unable to leave without help.

?????????Other forms of trafficking may involve force, deception and abuse for labour or sex work and therefore constitute slavery.

? Sexual Slavery in the context of International Criminal Law and the Rome Statute was meant to deal with war crimes whereby women and children were captured by armed forces and exploited.??

???????Valerie Oosterveld wrote the paper Sexual Slavery and the International Criminal Court: Advancing International Law and wrote the following with regard to slavery as a war crime:-

“On January 29, 2004, the ICC announced that the President of Uganda had decided to refer the situation concerning the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) to the Prosecutor.' After considering the request, the Prosecutor determined that there was a sufficient basis to start planning for the ICC's first investigation. There are numerous reports of girls and women being kidnapped by the LRA and subjected to forced "marriage."Girls as young as 12 are given to commanders as "wives" and each soldier may have several such wives. Many of these "wives" have become pregnant and have contracted sexually transmitted diseases. Human Rights Watch has reported that abducted girls are initially assigned to commanders as domestic servants and, after puberty, as "wives."

??????The context of slavery and sexual slavery as a war crime involves far more specific sets of circumstances than the broader definitions used by trafficking in persons laws; however both trafficking and slavery are breaches of human rights.