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

3. Trafficking in human organs
147. There are some references to trafficking in human organs in various reports prepared for
submission to the Commission on Human Rights but no survey of this practice has been compiled
concerning the world as a whole.
252
The World Health Assembly has adopted guidelines that
establish international standards governing organ transplants and the possibility of commercial
trafficking.
253
The guidelines prohibit trafficking in human organs for commercial gain.
148. In 1991 the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery expressed concern about
information “alleging that children are victims of, or are even killed for, the removal of organs for
the purpose of commercial transplants”.
254
The Working Group later noted that “specific proof of
incidents involving and of the extent of this phenomenon is difficult to obtain” and requested the
246
United Nations document E/CN.4/Sub.2/Res. 2001/11, para. 12(i). 
247
Declaration, para. 13.
248
Declaration, para. 100.
249
Declaration, para. 101.
250
Declaration, para. 102.
251
Declaration, para. 160.
252
V. Muntarbhorn, Report on the sale of children, United Nations document E/CN.4/1991/51, paras. 23-25. The
issue of organ trafficking was also mentioned by Ofelia Calcetas-Santos in her reports on the sale of children, child pros-
titution and child pornography submitted to the General Assembly, United Nations document A/50/456, para. 49, and
to the Commission on Human Rights, United Nations document E/CN.4/1996/100, paras. 41-48.
253
World Health Organization, Human Organ Transplantation, A Report on Developments under the Auspices
of WHO (1987-1991) (1991), forty-fourth World Health Assembly, resolution WHA44.25.
254
Report of the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery on its sixteenth session, United Nations doc-
ument E/CN.4/Sub.2/1991/41, para. 138.

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