Abstract:

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons has demanded improvements to US legislation to combat cases of forced labour and labour exploitation. The Hong Kong High Court has held that while forced labour was not a criminal offence, trafficking a person for forced or compulsory labour did carry criminal liability. This article’s objective is to analyse critically the underlying norms of businesses trafficking in people for purposes of forced labour. The 1841 (Quintuple) London Treaty had bound the concerned governments to prohibit their private businesses from use of forced labour, by businesses’ resort to both the slave trade and capital investment in slave trading. Stamping out other countries’ business development by means of the slave trade appeared to promoteethical business, but really was calculated to make Britain pre-eminent in trade. The League of Nations determined that forced labour must not be developed into conditions resembling slavery. Thus the research question is whether international actions to abolish slavery ever really had such an intention. Argument will try to show that the recruitment issues of human trafficking and forced labour in effect constitute slavery, but are veiled by split definitions of slavery. The research will likely show that trading in servants, fraudulently coerced, or even with their consent, and placed under unknown supervision, in excessive debt, and in excessively harsh conditions, is forced labour actually becoming slavery.