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

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Abolishing Slavery
82. Moreover, the Trafficking Protocol contains no provision for a mechanism to monitor its
implementation or to hold Governments to account for failing to implement it. The absence of a
supervisory mechanism could prove significant, since a major criticism of the Suppression of Traf-
fic Convention has been its lack of an effective reporting mechanism.
141
The Suppression of Traffic
Convention merely requests that States parties annually communicate to the Secretary-General of
the United Nations any laws, regulations and other measures adopted by them concerning the
Convention. The Secretary-General is directed to publish periodically the information received
and to send it to all United Nations Member States and non-member States.
142
There is no provi-
sion for the establishment of a monitoring body that could systematically study information sup-
plied, request a particular State party for further information or scrutinize the application of the
Suppression of Traffic Convention by a particular State party. “Compared with the reporting or
monitoring systems of other human rights instruments, the reporting clause of the 1949 Conven-
tion appears vague and without effective influence on the implementation and enactment of the
provisions.”
143
The United Nations Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery invites
States to report on measures taken in conformity with the Suppression of Traffic Convention
despite lacking an explicit mandate to do so. It is unclear whether the Working Group will seek
to pursue a similar mandate for the Trafficking Protocol.
1. Trafficking in women
83. Adopting a similar approach to the resolutions of the annual Commission on Human Rights
on the issue of trafficking in persons, which focus on women and children, the earliest drafts of
the Trafficking Protocol limited its scope to trafficking in women and children. States, inter-gov-
ernmental organizations and NGOs objected, however, that this approach was overly restrictive.
Accordingly, the scope of the Trafficking Protocol was expanded to cover trafficking in all persons,
with special attention being paid to women and children. While earlier treaties applied only to
women and girls, the Suppression of Traffic Convention takes the same approach as the Trafficking
Protocol, applying to men and women of all ages. Other treaties focus primarily on the problem
of trafficking in women. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against
Women, for example, includes in its article 6 the requirement that States parties suppress traffick-
ing in women.
144
Various organizations have proposed definitions of “trafficking in women” in an
effort to distinguish it from other forms of trafficking.
145
Trafficking has been established as a vio-
lation of women’s rights. In the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, adopted at the end
of the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights, it was agreed that “[g]ender-based violence and
all forms of sexual harassment and exploitation, including those resulting from cultural prejudices
and international trafficking, are incompatible with the dignity and worth of the person and should
be eliminated.”
146
At its 1998 session, the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery
adopted a recommendation declaring that “transborder trafficking of women and girls for sexual
141
See United Nations document E/CN.4/Sub.2/1989/37 (1989); (the Secretary-General of the United Nations
noted that the reporting clauses of the Suppression of Traffic Convention are without effective influence on implemen-
tation and therefore recommended the establishment of a reporting procedure).
142
Suppression of Traffic Convention, supra note 83, art. 21.
143
Liesbeth Zegveld, Combat of Traffic in Persons within the U.N., Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, SIM
Special No.17 (1995), p. 45.
144
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women adopted by General As-
sembly resolution 34/180 of 18 December 1979; entered into force on 3 September 1981.
145
Parliamentary Assembly Recommendation 1325 (1997) on traffic in women and forced prostitution in Council
of Europe member states, Assembly debate on 23 April 1997 (13
th
Sitting) (defining “traffic in women” as “any legal or
illegal transporting of women and/or trade in them, with or without their initial consent, for economic gain, with the
purpose of subsequent forced prostitution, forced marriage or other form of forced sexual exploitation”); “Trafficking of
Women to The European Union: Characteristics, Trends and Policy Issues”, International Organization for Migration
(1996) (defining trafficking in women as “any illicit transporting of migrant women and/or trade in them for economic
personal gain,” including facilitating their movement, legal or illegal, physically or sexually abusing them for the pur-
pose of trafficking, selling or trading in them for the purpose of employment, marriage, prostitution or other forms of
profit-making abuse). 

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