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

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Abolishing Slavery
Slavery upon employers not to take possession of workers’ passports or other key documents. . . .
A vital form of preventive action for all migrants appears to be to ensure that they are not left alone
or isolated, i.e. that some freedom of association is respected and that consulates closely monitor
their migrant nationals.”
80
The Migrant Smuggling Protocol encourages States to implement infor-
mation campaigns designed to discourage illegal migration.
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E. Trafficking
60. Prior to the adoption of the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Traf-
ficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Trafficking Protocol) in November 2000,
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the
main international convention concerned with trafficking in persons dealt uniquely with traffic for
the purposes of prostitution. Accordingly, the issues of traffic or trafficking in persons and prosti-
tution were routinely addressed together. Since instruments define traffic or trafficking to cover the
movement of people for purposes other than prostitution or sexual exploitation, however, this
report deals separately with the issues of traffic in persons and prostitution. They are closely
linked, however, so the two sections should be read together.
61. The Trafficking Protocol, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transna-
tional Organized Crime, provides the first clear definition of trafficking in international law. Before
the adoption of the Trafficking Protocol there was no precise and globally recognized definition
of “trafficking in persons”. The drafting process represented the first opportunity in decades to
address the relationship between trafficking and prostitution. Consequently, several aspects of the
definition proved extremely controversial. The result of these negotiations was a definition that
departed from the approach taken in the 1949 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Per-
sons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (the Suppression of Traffic Convention),
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the Convention that had previously formed the principal legal basis of international protection
against the traffic in persons.
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62. The trafficking of persons today can be viewed as the modern equivalent of the slave trade
of the nineteenth century.
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The Covenant of the League of Nations adopted on 28 April 1919 not
only called on Member States to ensure fair and humane conditions of employment for all but also
to work towards the suppression of traffic in women and children, in particular for the purpose of
sexual exploitation. Prior to the existence of the League of Nations, certain efforts had been made
by the international community to prohibit the slave trade.
63. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the Brussels Act of 1890 contained measures to
control and prevent the slave trade. It provided for a Slavery Bureau to oversee this process, and
the known sea routes preferred by slave traders were subjected to naval patrolling. Article XVIII of
the Brussels Act stated that a “strict supervision shall be organized by the local authorities at the
ports and in the countries adjacent to the coast, with the view of preventing the sale and shipment
of slaves”. Today, it is increasingly difficult to monitor and control trafficking in persons given the
80
United Nations document E/CN.4/2000/12 (2000), para. 68.
81
Migrant Smuggling Protocol, supra note 74, art. 15.1.
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Trafficking Protocol, supra note 28.
83
Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (Sup-
pression of Traffic Convention), United Nations Treaty Series, vol. 96, p. 271; entered into force on 25 July 1951. 
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The terms “traffic” and “trafficking” refer to the same phenomenon in English. Confusion sometimes arises
when these terms are translated into other languages using several different terms to denote different degrees of serious-
ness or enslavement, while in English the single term “traffic” is employed. The Suppression of Traffic Convention refers
in its English-language title to “the traffic in persons”, in French to “la traite des êtres humains” and in Spanish to “la
trata de personas”. The terms “traite” and “trata” are the same as those used to refer to the word trade in the phrase
“slave trade”, as in the title of the Supplementary Convention, and appear to carry a stronger connotation of treating
human beings as commodities than the term “traffic” conveys in English.
85
See Kevin Tessier, “The New Slave Trade: The International Crisis of Immigrant Smuggling”, Indiana Journal of
Global Legal Studies, vol. 13 (1995-1996), p. 261.

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