Slavery in International Law

Book excerpt: With the advent, in the twenty-first century, of the trafficking conventions and the criminalisation of enslavement before the International Criminal Court, the need to establish the black-letter law dealing with human exploitation has become acute. Slavery in International Law sets out the applicable law of human exploitation in the various sub-areas of international law, including general international law, human rights law, humanitarian law, labour law and the law of the sea; so as to create an overall understanding of what constitutes, in law, slavery and lesser types of human exploitation including: forced labour and servitudes such as debt bondage or servile marriage, as set out in the established definition of ‘trafficking in persons’.