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

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Abolishing Slavery
73. The Trafficking Protocol defines “trafficking in persons” as having three elements, all of
which must be present for the Convention to apply:
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1. An action, consisting of “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of
persons”;
2. By means of “the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud,
of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or
receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over
another person”;
3. For “the purpose of exploitation”.
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The second element of this definition creates an association between the Trafficking Protocol and
earlier international instruments concerning slavery, as the means mentioned include “the threat
or use of force or other forms of coercion”. The definition of abusive situations in the Trafficking
Protocol goes beyond the means of control and coercion invoked in the slavery conventions to
include deception and the abuse of power and vulnerability. Deception means that a person has
been tricked into a vulnerable or abusive situation. For example, people are commonly deceived
about the kind of work they will have to undertake or the conditions under which they will be
living. Along with the use of force, coercion and deception, the Trafficking Protocol addresses the
situation in which money is paid to a third person, for example the victim’s relatives, in order to
gain control over the victim. Where an abuse of power or position of responsibility occurs, the
travaux preparatoires state that such abuse must be understood to “refer to any situation in which
the person involved had no real and acceptable alternative but to submit to the abuse
involved”.
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For example, if a woman has no choice but to submit to her husband’s, relatives’ or
employers’ wishes – resulting in her recruitment or transfer into an exploitative situation – an
abuse of power or position of responsibility occurs. The criteria in the second element of the def-
inition only apply if the person trafficked is aged eighteen or over; when young persons under
eighteen are involved, coercion or deception does not have to be shown.
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74. The Trafficking Protocol’s definition of exploitation includes, “at a minimum, the exploita-
tion 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”.
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Taken together with
its second element (the means), this provision means the Trafficking Protocol considers the recruit-
ment of adult women and men into prostitution to constitute trafficking if accompanied by the
threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, deception, abuse of power or use of payments to
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When children are involved, however, the second element of coercion or deception does not have to be
shown. See the section on Trafficking and Children below.
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Trafficking Protocol, supra note 28, art. 3.
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Interpretative notes for the official records (travaux preparatoires) of the negotiation of the Protocol to Prevent,
Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Con-
vention against Transnational Organized Crime, United Nations document A/55/383/Add.1, para. 63.
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Trafficking Protocol, supra note 28, art. 3(4).
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The terms “slavery”, “forced labour”, “practices similar to slavery” or “servitude” are not defined in the Traf-
ficking Protocol. Definitions of the first three terms are contained in other international legal instruments, as outlined
above. Servitude, however, as opposed to “servile status”, is not defined in international law. It is worth noting that in
an earlier draft of the Protocol, servitude was defined to mean “the status or condition of dependency of a person who
is [unjustifiably] compelled by another person to render any service and who reasonably believes that he or she had no
reasonable alternative but to perform the service”. (Revised Draft Protocol to Prevent Suppress and Punish Trafficking
in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Ad Hoc Committee on the Elaboration of Convention against Transnational
Organized Crime, ninth session, Vienna, 5-16 June 2000, United Nations document A/AC.254/4/Add.3/Rev.6.) This
definition was dropped in the final version of the Protocol (as were definitions of the other terms). In addition, the United
States Violence Protection Act of 2000 defines “involuntary servitude” to include:
“a condition of servitude induced by means of:
A) Any scheme, plan or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that, if the person did not enter into or continue
in such condition, that person or another person would suffer serious harm or physical restraint; or
B) The abuse or threatened abuse of the legal system.”

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