Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Abolishing Slavery and its Contemporary Forms

I. FORMS OF SLAVERY

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Abolishing Slavery
its prohibition in the Supplementary Convention appear applicable to a range of practices that still
occur today but are rarely recognized or described in the countries concerned as “serfdom”, as
the term is linked by many to the political and economic order of medieval Europe.
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35. In some cases the status of “serf” is hereditary, affecting entire families on a permanent basis,
while in others it is linked to and reinforced by debt bondage; in the latter case those affected are
obliged to continue working for their landowner on account of debts they supposedly owe as well
as on account of their tenant status. 
B. Forced Labour
36. The use of forced labour has been condemned by the international community as a practice
similar to but distinct from slavery. The League of Nations and the United Nations have made a
distinction between slavery and forced or compulsory labour and the International Labour Orga-
nization was given principal responsibility for the abolition of the latter.
1. International Labour Organization
37. The ILO has adopted some 183 conventions in the international labour code ranging from
maternity protection issues to protection of the most vulnerable and poverty-stricken labourers.
The ILO has four fundamental principles that it aims to achieve, namely: the elimination of forced
labour; freedom of association, including the right to form or join a trade union; the effective abo-
lition of child labour; and the ending of discrimination in employment.
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2. Forced labour conventions
38. The Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29) provides for the abolition of forced labour.
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It defines forced or compulsory labour in article 2(1) as meaning “all work or service which is
exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not
offered himself voluntarily”. While this definition distinguishes forced labour from slavery in that
it does not include a concept of ownership, it is clear that the practice imposes a similar degree
of restriction on the individual’s freedom – often through violent means, making forced labour sim-
ilar to slavery in its effect on the individual.
39. ILO Convention No. 29 obliges States parties to “suppress the use of forced or compulsory
labour within the shortest possible time”.
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The lack of an absolute prohibition, along with the
existence of such an ambiguous timeline for eradicating forced labour, may be explained by the
fact that it was still routine for colonial authorities to rely on forced labour for public works. The
ILO has recently noted, however, that a country may no longer rely on this timeline to justify inad-
equate national protections against forced labour.
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40. In a joint report issued in 1955, the United Nations Secretary-General and the Director-Gen-
eral of the ILO concluded that, despite the prohibitions of ILO Convention No. 29, forced labour
41
Junius P. Rodriguez, ed., “Serfdom in Medieval Europe”, in The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery
(1977), vol. 2, p. 575.
42
 See the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its Follow-up, adopted on 18 June
1998 by the International Labour Conference at its eight-sixth session, ILO document CIT/1998/PR20A.
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The ILO Forced Labour Convention, 1930, is the most widely ratified ILO convention with 158 States parties.
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ILO Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29), art. 1, para. 1, United Nations Treaty Series, vol. 39, p. 55;
entered into force on 1 May 1932 (emphasis added).
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Report of the Committee of Experts (1998), p. 100. The Commission of Inquiry on the observance of the Forced
Labour Convention No. 29 in Myanmar agreed with this view having regard to the status of the abolition of forced or
compulsory labour in general international law as a peremptory norm from which no derogations can be made. Forced
Labour in Myanmar Report (1998), p. 72.

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