International Day for the Abolition of Slavery

The International Day for the Abolition of Slavery is a yearly event on December 2, organized by the United Nations General Assembly. The Day was first celebrated in 1986.

Slavery is not merely a historical relic. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) more than 40 million people worldwide are victims of modern slavery. Although modern slavery is not defined in law, it is used as an umbrella term covering practices such as forced labour, debt bondage, forced marriage, and human trafficking. Essentially, it refers to situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, deception, and/or abuse of power. In addition, more than 150 million children are subject to child labour, accounting for almost one in ten children around the world.

Key Facts and figures:

An estimated 40.3 million people are in modern slavery, including 24.9 in forced labour and 15.4 million in forced marriage.

There are 5.4 victims of modern slavery for every 1,000 people in the world. 1 in 4 victims of modern slavery are children.

Out of the 24.9 million people trapped in forced labour, 16 million people are exploited in the private sector such as domestic work, construction or agriculture; 4.8 million people in forced sexual exploitation, and 4 million people in forced labour imposed by state authorities.

Women and girls are disproportionately affected by forced labour, accounting for 99% of victims in the commercial sex industry, and 58% in other sectors.

ILO has adopted a new legally binding Protocol designed to strengthen global efforts to eliminate forced labour, which entered into force.

50 for Freedom campaign aims to persuade at least 50 countries to ratify the Forced Labour Protocol.

#AbolitionofSlavery 

Child Labour

Globally, one in ten children works. The majority of the child labour that occurs today is for economic exploitation. That goes against the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which recognizes “the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.”

Trafficking

According to the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, trafficking in persons means the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation includes 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. The consent of the person trafficked for exploitation is irrelevant and If the trafficked person is a child, it is a crime even without the use of force.

International Instruments

• Convention on the Rights of the Child: Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography (2000)

• United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime: Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (2000)

• Recommendation on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages (1965)

• Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages (1962)

• Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (1956)

• Protocol amending the Slavery Convention signed at Geneva on 25 September 1926 (1953)

• Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (1949)

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

• Slavery Convention (1926)

• Additional Declarations and Conventions on Human Rights

International Labour Organization Conventions

• Protocol of 2014 to the Forced Labour Convention (1930)

• Forced Labour Convention (1930)

• Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (1957)

• Minimum Age Convention (1973)

• Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (1999)