On the Curious Disappearance of Human Servitude from General International Law

Abstract

This study considers the drafting history of Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its impact on the negotiations of the 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery. The latter instrument, it bares noting, was originally drafted in 1954 as: the Draft Supplementary Convention on Slavery and Servitude. The unwillingness of States to abolish servitude outright in 1956, led to a fragmentation of international law, which is reflected today in both the 2001 United Nations and 2005 Council of European instruments related to human trafficking – which reproduce the same definition of ‘trafficking in persons’ and enumerate various types of exploitation to be suppressed. Amongst those types of exploitation are including both practices similar to slavery and servitude. Yet, ‘practices similar to slavery’ are no different than ‘servitude’ in their nature, but in law they have been divided, with the former forming part of general international law as manifest in the 1956 Supplementary Convention, the latter in international human rights law as ‘servitude’ left undefined. Thus practices similar to slavery are those four conventional servitudes established in general international law in 1956: debt-bondage, serfdom, forced marriage, and child exploitation; while servitude has not been defined by an international instrument though it has been given content in large measure through the pronouncement of bodies supervising human rights treaties.