"No One Shall Be Held in Slavery or Servitude": A Critical Analysis of International Slavery Agreements and Concepts of Slavery [1].(difficulties of definition and redress)

Most historians of slavery do not know how lucky they are. The majority of scholars concerned with slavery focus on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the legal slave trade of the period, and its aftermath. For these scholars, the historical period can be clearly demarcated by the legislative moments when the slave trade or slavery itself was abolished within states or empires. The scholar of contemporary slavery enjoys no such clarity. Slavery as a social and economic relationship has never ceased to exist during recorded history, but the form that it takes and its definition have evolved and changed. Not surprisingly, legal definitions have often failed to keep up with this evolution. At present a renewed interest in slavery is highlighting the discrepancy and confusion of the many definitions of slavery that are used by international bodies, national governments, and scholars.

This paper traces the development of slavery definitions in international agreements from 1815 to the present to show how the concept of slavery has become increasingly confused. Through this process, we aim to generate a more dynamic and universal definition of contemporary slavery from theoretical models and substantive examples. We also interrogate practices defined as slavery in relationship to our definition in order to separate slavery from other, similar human rights abuses, in the expectation that a clearer definition of contemporary slavery will allow for more effective study and legislation against it.

Overview of Slavery Definitions in International Law [2]

Freedom from slavery has been defined in international law as a fundamental human right. In spite of this, however, and in spite of the fact that slavery has been subject to some of the strongest sanctions of the international community, none of the more than 300 laws and agreements written since 1815 to combat it has been totally effective.

Early abolitionists in the late eighteenth century took as their first goal not the abolition of slavery as an institution, but the ending of the international slave trade. The 1815 Declaration [3] Relative to the Universal Abolition of the Slave Trade [4] (the "1815 Declaration") was the first international instrument [5] to condemn it, and one of the abolitionist movement's first clear achievements. The early attempts to redress slavery established duties to prohibit, prevent, prosecute, and punish anyone participating in the slave trade. The goal was to eliminate slavery by imposing an obligation on each state to make it a crime. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars a large number of agreements were made, both multilaterally and bilaterally, containing provisions prohibiting slavery and the slave trade in times of war and peace.

With the establishment of the League of Nations in the aftermath of World War I, international attention focused on the elimination of slavery and slavery-related practices under the League's leadership, [6] though quarrels among the colonial powers often slowed its efforts. The League's work on the elimination of all forms of slavery helped to convince the world that the rights of individuals constituted a legitimate part of international law. Until that time, international law mostly dealt with the relationships between sovereign nations.

The UN took over the League's role after World War II, and slavery was firmly established as a violation of basic internationally recognized human rights. Early work of the UN included updating slavery conventions made by the League of Nations. It is now a well-established principle that the" prohibition against slavery and slavery related practices have achieved the level of customary international law and have attained jus cogens' status." [7]