The International Labour Organization (ILO) on Tuesday launched a campaign aimed at mobilizing people around the world to lobby their governments to end modern-day slavery.
The “50 for Freedom” campaign, organized in partnership with the International Organisation of Employers and the International Trade Union Confederation, is calling on governments to ratify the forced labor protocol.
The campaign is called 50 for Freedom because it hopes to persuade at least 50 countries to sign up to the protocol, which is an attempt to bring legislation on forced labor and trafficking up to date. The previous convention dates from 1930.
The new text was agreed by a majority of ILO member states last year, and includes measures to prevent contemporary forms of slavery as well as protecting and compensating victims. It can only come into force when at least two countries have ratified it. So far, Niger is the only country to have done so.
Trafficking experts believe a new set of legal tools is urgently needed to tackle the more complex forms of modern slavery.
“The original ILO convention was one of the oldest ILO conventions, although one of the most ratified. So states thought there were gaps [in protection]. They wanted a new treaty,” said Houtan Homayounpour, senior program and operations officer for the ILO’s special action program against forced labor.
One new obligation for states is to ensure that people who are trafficked are not prosecuted for crimes they commit while under the control of traffickers.
Another new and — campaigners say — important addition to the legislation is compensation for victims, many of whom would be in a country illegally.
Homayounpour said there was a big gap in protection for people who would be subject to immediate deportation.
“Very often these workers find themselves without access to any help; they are kicked out of the country or imprisoned and the research shows they are then more likely to fall victim to traffickers again. This is a real weakness — it happens all over the world,” he said.
He said there would be a lot of work to do in the next two years to get countries to ratify the protocol.
“Niger is showing leadership in wanting to be the first to ratify this — it’s fantastic from a continent that has historical ties to slavery that they no longer want to be a part of this. Definitely, it will require more work in certain countries because of the lack of structure, the weak labor inspection services [and] financial limitations,” he said.
There are an estimated 21 million forced labor victims worldwide. Forced labor in the global private economy generates illegal profits of US$150 billion per year according to ILO research last year. That is as much as the combined profits of the four most profitable companies in the world .
Homayounpour believed the involvement of people around the world would eventually make the 50 for Freedom campaign successful.
“Citizen support is fundamental,” he said. “It will get the general public to create a movement from the ground. I am an optimist. Through history there have been things that people thought could not be eliminated but they were proved wrong — and forced labor will be one of those examples.”
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