Project Overview

Conceptual Framework / Legislation :

The recently adopted UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, includes a definition of trafficking which also serves as the project's working definition of trafficking:

'Trafficking in persons means ‘the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, or deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of giving or receiving or payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the 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 a victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation [ …] shall be irrelevant where any of [these] means are used;

The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered ‘trafficking in persons’ even if this does not involve any of [these] means’.

The following international legislation is of relevance to the issue of trafficking in Southeast Asia and to the project:

• Synopsis of International Laws Relevant to Trafficking
  By Mr. Tim de Meyer, ILO-IPEC
  Download as PDF Document (119KB)

Relevant ILO and UN Conventions

• C29 – Forced Labour Convention
• C105 – Abolition of Forced Labour
• UN Slavery Convention

• C138 – Minimum Age Convention
• R146 - Recommendations for C138
• C182 – Worst forms of Child Labour Convention
• R190 – Recommendations for C182
• UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
• UN Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on children in sale and prostitution of Children

• C100 - Equal Renumeration Convention
• C111 – Discrimination in Respect to Employment and Occupation
• C169 – Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention

• C87 - Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize Convention
• C98 - Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining Convention

• C97 – Migration for Employment
• C143 – Migrations in Abusive Conditions
• C181 - Private Employment Agencies Convention
• C138 – Minimum Age Convention
• UN Migrant Workers Convention
• UN 1949 Trafficking Convention
• UN New Protocol on Trafficking in Persons