Con­tri­bu­tion of the Sov­er­eign Order of Malta
to the Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on Con­tem­po­rary Forms of Slav­ery, Pro­fes­sor Tomoya Oboka­ta Gene­va, March 2021 

The Sov­er­eign Order of Mal­ta assists dis­placed per­sons around the world, includ­ing chil­dren, through social ser­vices by its nation­al Asso­ci­a­tions or through human­i­tar­i­an aid car­ried out by its Asso­ci­a­tions and its world­wide human­i­tar­i­an orga­ni­za­tion, Mal­teser Inter­na­tion­al. The Order of Mal­ta col­lab­o­rates with Gov­ern­ments, inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions such as the Office of the High Com­mis­sion­er for Human Rights, UNODC, IOM, region­al orga­ni­za­tions, uni­ver­si­ties, foun­da­tions and reli­gious con­gre­ga­tions in its fight against con­tem­po­rary forms of slav­ery. The Order of Mal­ta would like to high­light the val­ue of the con­crete action of many reli­gious con­gre­ga­tions in the pro­tec­tion and reha­bil­i­ta­tion of vic­tims of con­tem­po­rary forms of slavery.

In order to bet­ter pro­tect dis­placed per­sons from con­tem­po­rary forms of slav­ery, the Order of Mal­ta stress­es the impor­tance for all par­ties involved to respect the fol­low­ing rel­e­vant inter­na­tion­al legal instruments:

1. Human Rights:

   1. Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights (1948), Arti­cle 4 pro­hibits slav­ery and servi­tude, and the two Covenants of 1966, in par­tic­u­lar Arti­cle 8 of the Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights.

   1.2 Euro­pean Con­ven­tion on Human Rights (1950, amend­ed in 2010),
   Arti­cle 4 pro­hibits slav­ery and forced labor.
   Note the case law of the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights on this subject:
   Sil­iadin v. France, appli­ca­tion no. 73316/01, judg­ment of July 26, 2005, paras. 89 and 112; Rant­sev v. Cyprus and Rus­sia, appli­ca­tion no. 25965/04, judg­ment of Jan­u­ary 7, 2010, paras. 285 and 288; J. and oth­ers v. Aus­tria, appli­ca­tion no. 58216/12, judg­ment of Jan­u­ary 17, 2017, para. 107; Chow­dury and oth­ers v. Greece (March 30, 2017).

   1.3 Amer­i­can Con­ven­tion on Human Rights (1969),
   Arti­cle 6 pro­hibits slav­ery, servi­tude and forced labor. Note the rul­ing of the
   Inter-Amer­i­can Court of Human Rights, Tra­ba­jadores Hacien­da Brasil Verde vs Brasil, judg­ment of Octo­ber 20, 2016, Series C, No. 318, para. 319.
   With­in the frame­work of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS), the Meet­ings of Min­is­ters of Jus­tice and Oth­er Min­is­ters or Attor­neys Gen­er­al of the Amer­i­c­as (REMJA) have rec­om­mend­ed, in view of the fact that traf­fick­ing in per­sons con­sti­tutes a seri­ous crime that must be qual­i­fied, pre­vent­ed, and com­bat­ed by all States and whose vic­tims are in a con­di­tion of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that requires greater atten­tion at the inter­na­tion­al lev­el as well as the nec­es­sary assis­tance and pro­tec­tion, that this issue be kept as a per­ma­nent item on the agen­da of its meetings.

1.4. African Char­ter on Human and Peo­ples’ Rights (1981),
Arti­cle 5 pro­hibits “all forms of exploita­tion and degra­da­tion of man, in par­tic­u­lar slav­ery, traf­fic in per­sons, phys­i­cal or moral tor­ture, and
cru­el, inhu­man or degrad­ing treat­ment or punishment”. 
See the deci­sion of the Court of Jus­tice of the Eco­nom­ic Com­mu­ni­ty of West African States (ECOWAS) in the case of Hadi­ja­tou Mani Koraou v. Niger (27 Octo­ber 2008)

1.5. 2004 Arab Char­ter on Human Rights. See Arti­cles 9 and 10.

1.6. ASEAN Human Rights Dec­la­ra­tion, adopt­ed 2012, Arti­cle 13 pro­hibits slav­ery, human traf­fick­ing and organ traf­fick­ing.

2. Rights of the child:
   1. Inter­na­tion­al­Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child (CRC) of 1989 and its two Option­al Pro­to­cols of 2000, one on the involve­ment of chil­dren in armed con­flict, the oth­er on the sale of chil­dren, child pros­ti­tu­tion and child pornog­ra­phy.
   2.2. Coun­cil of Europe Con­ven­tion on the Pro­tec­tion of Chil­dren against Sex­u­al Exploita­tion and Sex­u­al Abuse of 25 Octo­ber 2007 (“Lan­zarote Convention”).
   2.4. Coun­cil of Europe Con­ven­tion on Cyber­crime, Novem­ber 23, 2001 (“Budapest Con­ven­tion”). This is the first inter­na­tion­al treaty on crim­i­nal offences com­mit­ted via the Inter­net and oth­er com­put­er net­works, in par­tic­u­lar child pornog­ra­phy (Arti­cle 9).

3. Wom­en’s rights
   1. 1979 Con­ven­tion on the Elim­i­na­tion of All Forms of Dis­crim­i­na­tion against Women and its 1999 Option­al Pro­to­col estab­lish­ing the Com­mit­tee on the Elim­i­na­tion of Dis­crim­i­na­tion against Women.
   3.2. 1994 Inter-Amer­i­can Con­ven­tion on the Pre­ven­tion, Pun­ish­ment, and Erad­i­ca­tion of Vio­lence against Women (Con­ven­tion of Belém do Para).
   3.3. 2003 Pro­to­col to the African Char­ter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa. See Art. 4, 2, g: “pre­vent and con­demn traf­fick­ing in women, pros­e­cute the per­pe­tra­tors of such traf­fick­ing and pro­tect those women most at risk”.
   3.4. See the ILO ABC of women work­ers’ rights and gen­der equal­i­ty. Sec­ond ed. 2007
   and the fol­low­ing ILO Conventions:
   1951 Equal Remu­ner­a­tion Con­ven­tion (No. 100),
   1952 Social Secu­ri­ty (Min­i­mum Stan­dards) Con­vention (C102),
   1958 Dis­crim­i­na­tion (Employ­ment and Occu­pa­tion) Con­ven­tion (C111),
   1962 Equal­i­ty of Treat­ment (Social Secu­ri­ty) Con­ven­tion (C118),
   1981 Work­ers with Fam­i­ly Respon­si­bil­i­ties Con­ven­tion (C156),
   2000 Mater­ni­ty Pro­tec­tion Con­ven­tion (C183).
   3.5. 2017 “Train­ing Man­u­al for Judges and Pros­e­cu­tors on Ensur­ing Women’s Access to Jus­tice”pub­lished by the Part­ner­ship for Good Gov­er­nance (Euro­pean Union and Coun­cil of Europe).
4. Inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an law applic­a­ble in armed con­flict:
   1 In all sit­u­a­tions of armed con­flict, the fun­da­men­tal guar­an­tees of Arti­cle 3 com­mon to the four Gene­va Con­ven­tions of 1949 are applic­a­ble to “all per­sons not tak­ing a direct part in hostilities”.
   4.2. Arti­cle 27 of the Fourth Gene­va Con­ven­tion of 1949, rel­a­tive to the Pro­tec­tion of Civil­ian Per­sons in Time of War, pro­claims respect for the human per­son and the inalien­able char­ac­ter of fun­da­men­tal rights.

   4.3. Arti­cle 1 com­mon to the four 1949 Con­ven­tions, the States Par­ties “under­take to respect and to ensure respect for the present Con­ven­tion in all cir­cum­stances”.

   4.4. Arti­cles 75 (“Fun­da­men­tal guar­an­tees”), 76 (“Pro­tec­tion of women”), 77 (“Pro­tec­tion of chil­dren”) and 78 (“Evac­u­a­tion of chil­dren”) of the Pro­to­col Addi­tion­al to the Gene­va Con­ven­tions of 12 August 1949, and relat­ing to the Pro­tec­tion of Vic­tims of Inter­na­tion­al Armed Con­flicts (Pro­to­col I), of 8 June 1977

   4. 5. Pro­to­col Addi­tion­al to the Gene­va Con­ven­tions of 12 August 1949, and relat­ing to the Pro­tec­tion of Vic­tims of Non-Inter­na­tion­al Armed Con­flicts (Pro­to­col II), 8 June 1977, in its Arti­cle 4 (“Fun­da­men­tal Safe­guards”), num­ber 2, let­ter e, pro­hibits, at any time and in any place, slav­ery and the slave trade in all their forms against all per­sons who are not or are no longer tak­ing part in the hos­til­i­ties, whether they are deprived of their lib­er­ty or not”.

   4.6. Accord­ing to the ICRC Data­base of Cus­tom­ary Inter­na­tion­al Human­i­tar­i­an Law, Rules 93 (“Rape and Oth­er Forms of Sex­u­al Vio­lence”), 94 (“Slav­ery and the Slave Trade”), 95 (“Forced Labour”), 136 (“Recruit­ment of Child Sol­diers”), and 137 (“Par­tic­i­pa­tion of Child Sol­diers in Hos­til­i­ties”) are norms of cus­tom­ary inter­na­tion­al law applic­a­ble in all armed conflicts.

5. Inter­na­tion­al refugee law:
   
   1. 1951 Con­ven­tion Relat­ing to the Sta­tus of Refugees and the 1967 Pro­to­col.
   See the Guide­lines on Inter­na­tion­al Pro­tec­tion No. 7: The Appli­ca­tion of Arti­cle 1A(2) of the 1951 Con­ven­tion and/or 1967 Pro­to­col Relat­ing to the Sta­tus of Refugees to Vic­tims of Traf­fick­ing and Per­sons at Risk of Being Traf­ficked (2006).
   The Office of the Unit­ed Nations High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UNHCR) has a role to play in pre­vent­ing asy­lum seek­ers, refugees , includ­ing chil­dren, and oth­er per­sons in need of inter­na­tion­al pro­tec­tion, inter­nal­ly dis­placed per­sons or state­less per­sons from falling vic­tim to human traf­fick­ing or in pro­vid­ing pro­tec­tion and assis­tance to those at risk of becom­ing vic­tims, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with sev­er­al orga­ni­za­tions — includ­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tion for Migra­tion (IOM). In 2020, UNHCR and IOM pub­lished an updat­ed Joint Frame­work on Devel­op­ing Stan­dard Oper­at­ing Pro­ce­dures for the Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and Pro­tec­tion of Vic­tims of Traf­fick­ing. Among oth­er ini­tia­tives, UNHCR co-leads the Task Team on Anti-Traf­fick­ing Glob­al Pro­tec­tion Clus­ter togeth­er with IOM and the Heart­land Alliance. The team is tasked with devel­op­ing glob­al guid­ance and capac­i­ty build­ing on prac­ti­cal mea­sures need­ed to address traf­fick­ing in per­sons in sit­u­a­tions of inter­nal dis­place­ment through the clus­ter response. The Inter-Agency Coor­di­na­tion Group against Traf­fick­ing (ICAT)
   is a pol­i­cy forum man­dat­ed by the U.N. Gen­er­al Assem­bly to improve inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion and coher­ence in approach­es to traf­fick­ing in per­sons. See the ICAT Toolk­it on Eval­u­at­ing Counter Traf­fick­ing Pro­grams. Har­ness­ing accu­mu­lat­ed knowl­edge to respond to traf­fick­ing in per­sons.

   5.2. 1969 OAU Con­ven­tion Gov­ern­ing the Spe­cif­ic Aspects of Refugee Prob­lems in Africa 

   5.3. 1984 Carta­ge­na Dec­la­ra­tion on Refugees (“Declaración de Carta­ge­na sobre los refu­gia­dos”), adopt­ed at the Col­lo­qui­um on the Inter­na­tion­al Pro­tec­tion of Refugees in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, Mex­i­co and Pana­ma, Carta­ge­na de Indias, Colombia.

6. Unit­ed Nations Con­ven­tions on State­less­ness
   1. 1954 — Con­ven­tion relat­ing to the Sta­tus of State­less Persons
   6.2. 1961 — Con­ven­tion on the Reduc­tion of Statelessness
7. Inter­nal­ly dis­placed per­sons
   1. 1998 Guid­ing Prin­ci­ples on Inter­nal Displacement
   
   7.2. 2009 African Union Con­ven­tion for the Pro­tec­tion and Assis­tance of Inter­nal­ly Dis­placed Per­sons in Africa - Kam­pala Con­ven­tion. The only inter­na­tion­al treaty explic­it­ly pro­tect­ing IDPs.
8. Inter­na­tion­al Labor Orga­ni­za­tion (ILO) Con­ven­tions on Forced Labor
   1. The Forced Labour Con­ven­tion, 1930 (No. 29)
   8.2. The Abo­li­tion of Forced Labor Con­ven­tion, 1957 (No. 105)

8.3. The 2014 Pro­to­col to the Forced Labour Con­ven­tion, 1930

8.4. The Worst Forms of Child Labor Con­ven­tion, 1999 (No. 182)
8.5. The Domes­tic Work­ers Con­ven­tion, 2011 (No. 189)
The ILO, in coop­er­a­tion with the OECD, IOM, and UNICEF, under the umbrel­la of Alliance 8.7, has pub­lished an excel­lent 2019 Report “End­ing Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Traf­fick­ing in Glob­al Sup­ply Chains.”
See the ILO “Judges, pros­e­cu­tors and legal aid prac­ti­tion­ers’ train­ing on forced labor. Facilitator’s guide” (2019).

9. Inter­na­tion­al instru­ments against human traf­fick­ing
   1. 1949 UN Con­ven­tion for the Sup­pres­sion of the Traf­fic in Per­sons and of the Exploita­tion of the Pros­ti­tu­tion of Others 

   9.2. 2000 Pro­to­col to Pre­vent, Sup­press and Pun­ish Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons, Espe­cial­ly Women and Chil­dren, sup­ple­ment­ing the Unit­ed Nations Con­ven­tion against Transna­tion­al Orga­nized Crime (Paler­mo Pro­to­col).
   See the excel­lent UNODC Report. Female Vic­tims of Traf­fick­ing for Sex­u­al Exploita­tion as Defen­dants. A Case Law Analy­sis. 124 p.

   9.3. 2005 Coun­cil of Europe Con­ven­tion on Action against Traf­fick­ing in Human Beings (CETS 197)

   9.4. 2008 Euro­pean Con­ven­tion on the Adop­tion of Chil­dren (revised) (CETS 202).

   9.5. 2011 Directive2011/36/EU of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment and of the Coun­cil on pre­vent­ing and com­bat­ing traf­fick­ing in human beings and pro­tect­ing its victims.

   9.6. 2015 Coun­cil of Europe Con­ven­tion against Traf­fick­ing in Human Organs,
   (CETS 216, San­ti­a­go de Com­postela Convention).
   Let us also empha­size the role and respon­si­bil­i­ty of doc­tors to avoid a mer­chan­diza­tion of the human body.

   9.7. ASEAN Con­ven­tion Against Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons, Espe­cial­ly Women and Chil­dren”, of 22 Novem­ber 2015. See the ASEAN Plan of Action.

10. Inter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal law instru­ments against slav­ery
    1. 1998 Statute of the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court:

    Art. 7, 1, g: slav­ery as a crime against human­i­ty;
    Art. 8, 2, b, xxii: sex­u­al slav­ery, forced pros­ti­tu­tion as war crimes;
    Art. 8, 2, c, vi: rape, sex­u­al slav­ery, forced pros­ti­tu­tion as a grave breach of Arti­cle 3 com­mon to the four Gene­va Con­ven­tions of 1949;
    Art. 8, 2, c, vii: con­script­ing or enlist­ing chil­dren under the age of 15 years into the armed forces or armed groups or using them to par­tic­i­pate active­ly in hostilities.

    10.2. 1993 Statute of the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Tri­bunal for the for­mer Yugoslavia (Art. 2 “Graves breach­es of the Gene­va Con­ven­tions of 1949”; 5, c) “Enslave­ment”)

    10.3. 1994 Statute of the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Tri­bunal for Rwanda 
    (“Crimes against human­i­ty”: Art. 3, c) and “Vio­la­tions of Arti­cle 3 com­mon to the Gene­va Con­ven­tions and Addi­tion­al Pro­to­col II”: Art. 4, espe­cial­ly e) “enforced prostitution”).

11. 
    The pro­hi­bi­tion of slav­ery has a cus­tom­ary, imper­a­tive char­ac­ter
    The Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice, in the Barcelona Trac­tion case (1970), not­ed the erga omnes char­ac­ter, bind­ing on all States and requir­ing their coop­er­a­tion in imple­men­ta­tion (Barcelona Trac­tion, Light and Pow­er Com­pa­ny, Lim­it­ed (Bel­gium v. Spain), Judg­ment, I.C.J. Reports 1970, p. 3 (paras. 33 and 34).

    12. Slav­ery con­tributes to nation­al, region­al and inter­na­tion­al insecurity:

    The UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, in a State­ment by the Pres­i­dent of the Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil of 16 Decem­ber 2015 — S/PRST/2015/25),notes that “traf­fick­ing in per­sons under­mines the rule of law and fos­ters oth­er forms of transna­tion­al orga­nized crime, which can exac­er­bate con­flict and fos­ter inse­cu­ri­ty.” Also note­wor­thy are sev­er­al Coun­cil res­o­lu­tions: 2242(2015); 2331(2016); 2388 (2017), 2437 (2018), 2491 (2019), 2546 (2020).
    12. The com­plex­i­ty of inter­na­tion­al stan­dards, as well as the small num­ber of cas­es pros­e­cut­ed in the courts, demon­strates the need to move beyond crim­i­nal­iza­tion: a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary glob­al mobi­liza­tion of a wide range of stake­hold­ers is need­ed for the effec­tive erad­i­ca­tion of this 21st cen­tu­ry scourge.
    
    Two inter­na­tion­al coali­tions led, respec­tive­ly in 1997 and 1998, to the adop­tion of the Ottawa Con­ven­tion and the Statute of the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court in Rome. It is a sim­i­lar coali­tion of States, inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions, human­i­tar­i­an orga­ni­za­tions, NGOs and pub­lic fig­ures that should lead to an aware­ness of the val­ue of these instru­ments of inter­na­tion­al law against all forms of con­tem­po­rary slav­ery and the urgent need to imple­ment them.
    13. A repli­ca­tion of the suc­cess­es of the envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion move­ment by the con­tem­po­rary anti-slav­ery move­ment, or even an alliance between the two, could cre­ate pow­er­ful syn­er­gies, includ­ing get­ting Gov­ern­ments to crack down more effec­tive­ly on con­tem­po­rary forms of slav­ery and get­ting the pri­vate sec­tor to keep a close eye on its sup­ply chains to ensure that they are free of slave labor.
    
    14. The link between the pro­tec­tion of the life and dig­ni­ty of every human being and the pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment should be empha­sized: it is too often through forced labor that the most seri­ous destruc­tion of the envi­ron­ment take place. It is an approach of an inte­gral ecol­o­gy, which does not exclude the human being, which incor­po­rates the val­ue of human work, that the Order of Mal­ta advo­cates, in the spir­it of the Encycli­cals “Laborem Exercens” (1981), “Sol­lic­i­tu­do Rei Socialis” (1987), “Cen­tes­imus Annus” (1991), “Laudatosi’ ” (2015) and “Fratel­li Tut­ti” (2020).

    15. The con­tri­bu­tion of the dif­fer­ent reli­gions to the erad­i­ca­tion of slav­ery deserves to be not­ed: it is done main­ly at two levels:

    - through appeals by lead­ers, such as the “Joint Dec­la­ra­tion of Reli­gious Lead­ers against Mod­ern Slav­ery”, of Decem­ber 2, 2014, where, for the first time in his­to­ry, lead­ers of the Catholic, Angli­can and Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ties, as well as Bud­dhist, Hin­du, Jew­ish and Mus­lim, joint­ly com­mit them­selves to a com­mon fight against slav­ery; and the Doc­u­ment on Human Fra­ter­ni­ty for World Peace and Liv­ing Togeth­er (Abu-Dhabi, Feb­ru­ary 2019):
    “Faith leads a believ­er to see in the oth­er a broth­er or sis­ter to be sup­port­ed and loved. Through faith in God, who has cre­at­ed the uni­verse, crea­tures and all human beings (equal on account of his mer­cy), believ­ers are called to express this human fra­ter­ni­ty by safe­guard­ing cre­ation and the entire uni­verse and sup­port­ing all per­sons, espe­cial­ly the poor­est and those most in need”.

- through con­crete actions on the ground to iden­ti­fy, raise aware­ness, pro­tect, reha­bil­i­tate and rein­te­grate the vic­tims of con­tem­po­rary slavery.

16. This erad­i­ca­tion of con­tem­po­rary slav­ery will require stronger imple­ment­ing laws, more court deci­sions, and nation­al plans. It will be facil­i­tat­ed by effec­tive pub­lic aware­ness cam­paigns, inter­dis­ci­pli­nary sym­po­siums, train­ing of judges, lawyers, par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, police and bor­der con­trol agents, mil­i­tary, med­ical per­son­nel, tourism per­son­nel, reli­gious lead­ers. There are many actors who need to work togeth­er in for­mal and infor­mal ways: dif­fer­ent parts of pub­lic admin­is­tra­tion, dif­fer­ent parts of civ­il soci­ety: police, judges, jour­nal­ists, uni­ver­si­ties and libraries, asso­ci­a­tions and foun­da­tions con­tribut­ing to the con­trol of mali­cious inter­net sites, sup­ply chains, and finan­cial trans­fers. In the face of pow­er­ful and well-orga­nized transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works, gen­er­at­ing illic­it prof­its amount­ing to 150 bil­lion dol­lars annu­al­ly, Gov­ern­ments, inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions and civ­il soci­ety must work togeth­er in con­crete ways.

The Sov­er­eign Order of Mal­ta has for sev­er­al years spo­ken out through its high­est offi­cials (Grand Mas­ter, Grand Chan­cel­lor, Grand Hos­pi­taller) against con­tem­po­rary slav­ery. It looks for­ward to con­tin­ue its col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Spe­cial Rap­por­teur and with all stake­hold­ers, in action and in law.

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