Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings
The Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings was signed by the UK on 23 March 2007 and was ratified on 17 December 2008. The UK became bound by the terms of the Convention on 1 April 2009.
The purposes of the Convention are
- to prevent and combat trafficking in human beings, while guaranteeing gender equality;
- to protect the human rights of the victims of trafficking, design a comprehensive framework for the protection and assistance of victims and witnesses, while guaranteeing gender equality, as well as to ensure effective investigation and prosecution;
- to promote international cooperation on action against trafficking in human beings.
The Convention builds on other elements of international law on human trafficking. It adopts the same definition for trafficking in human beings as the Palermo Protocol (the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime).
'Trafficking' is defined as "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation".
'Exploitation' is defined to "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".