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

Forms of Slavery
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ment that are not directly linked to prostitution, and also the movement of men, women, or chil-
dren across international frontiers for purposes other than prostitution, when they are being
subjected to coercion or are being deceived about the nature of the situation that awaits them.
99
United Nations General Assembly resolution 49/166 of 23 December 1994 offered a de facto def-
inition of trafficking in women and children. In that resolution, the Assembly condemned the
“illicit and clandestine movement of persons across national and international borders, largely
from developing countries and some countries with economies in transition, with the end goal of
forcing women and girl children into sexually or economically oppressive and exploitative situa-
tions for the profit of recruiters, traffickers and crime syndicates, as well as other illegal activities
related to trafficking, such as forced domestic labour, false marriages, clandestine employment
and false adoption”.
71. In December 1998 the United Nations General Assembly established an Ad Hoc Committee
with the aim of creating an international legal regime to fight transnational organized crime.
100
The resulting Convention against Transnational Organized Crime
101
is essentially an instrument of
international cooperation, its purpose being to promote inter-State cooperation in order to combat
such crime. It represents “the first serious attempt by the international community to invoke the
weapon of international law in its battle against transnational organized crime”.
102
The Conven-
tion is supplemented by three protocols, the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land,
Sea and Air (Migrant Smuggling Protocol),
103
the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Traf-
ficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Trafficking Protocol) and the Protocol against
the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms.
104
The Migrant Smuggling Protocol and
the Trafficking Protocol were both finalized at the eleventh session of the Ad Hoc Committee and
adopted by the General Assembly on 15 November 2000. 
72. It is necessary to set the Trafficking Protocol in the context of international crime prevention.
The application of the Trafficking Protocol is limited to situations where trafficking is perpetrated
by an organized criminal group across international borders.
105
This restriction contrasts with the
terms of the Suppression of Traffic Convention, which, in a step representing a move away from
the approach adopted in earlier international instruments, did not require an element of cross-bor-
der movement. In addition, the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime’s definition of
an organized criminal group requires there to be three or more members.
106
While that further
restriction reflects the intention of the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime to facil-
itate inter-State cooperation in the repression of organized crime, it is evidently irrelevant to an
individual who has been trafficked and whose human rights have been abused whether one, two,
three or more people were responsible.
99
The Traffic in Persons: Report of the Advisory Committee [to the Netherlands Minister on Foreign Affairs] on
Human Rights and Foreign Policy (1992); see also Seminar on action against traffic in women and forced prostitution,
Note by the Secretary-General, United Nations document E/CN.4/Sub.2/AC.2/1992/8 (1992) (proposing that the United
Nations should consider “extending the scope of relevant international regulations to include all forms of trafficking in
persons irrespective of the activity persons are trafficked for”); ILO Convention No. 143, supra note 70 (recognizing that
trafficking occurs for purposes in addition to prostitution).
100
General Assembly resolution 53/111 of 9 December 1998.
101
United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on the
Elaboration of a Convention against Transnational Organized Crime on the work of its first to eleventh sessions, adopted
on 15 November 2000, not yet entered into force, United Nations document A/55/383.
102
Anne Gallagher, Human Rights and the New UN Protocols on Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling: Preliminary
Analysis, Human Rights Quarterly (November 2001), vol. 23, No. 4.
103
Migrant Smuggling Protocol, supra note 74.
104
Protocol against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Their Parts and Components and Am-
munition, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, adopted by General
Assembly resolution 55/255 of 8 June 2001, not yet entered into force.
105
Trafficking Protocol, supra note 28, art. 4.
106
Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, supra note 101, art. 2(a). 

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