UK says it will sign Council of Europe Convention on Trafficking
On 22 January 2007 the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Tony Blair MP, announced that the UK would sign the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings.
The Convention imposes a range of obligations upon States, including obligations to identify victims of trafficking, to protect them and to provide support to assist in their physical, psychological and social recovery, including through provision of reflection periods during which they will not face immediate removal, and of residence permits where it would not be appropriate to compel them to return to their countries of origin.
The UK has extensive legislation making trafficking in human beings a crime, whether people are trafficked for slavery, prostitution, domestic servitude, or as part of the traffic in human organs. There are widely welcomed proposals in the new UK Borders Bill currently before the UK parliament to strengthen these offences so that they will cover anyone facilitating the arrival or entry into the UK of a person for the purposes of exploitation, regardless of where the facilitation took place and irrespective of the nationality of the person committing the offence.
While the UK has strong laws making trafficking a crime, there is less provision of protection and support for people who have been trafficked. The Council of Europe Convention could thus make a difference to the laws in the UK.
In 2006, the Home Office and the Scottish Executive ran a consultation: Tackling Human Trafficking: Consultation on Proposals for a UK Action Plan and the plan is expected soon.
A State must first sign an international treaty, then ratify it, and then uphold the obligations it has accepted. Signature is just the first step and people are waiting to see whether the UK will ratify the Convention at the same time as signing it. The UK signed the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography on 7 September 2000. In 2004, in its Interdepartmental Review of Human Rights, the UK said that it intended to ratify the Optional Protocol ‘at the earliest opportunity’, once it had made forms of trafficking for all purposes a crime. That was done in 2004, but ratification has not yet taken place.
A minimum number of ratifications are needed for an international treaty to come into force. The Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings needs 10 ratifications. So far, it has four: Austria, Moldova, Romania and now Albania, which ratified on 6 February 2007. Other international organisations doing extensive work on trafficking include the United Nations (UN), the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and Interpol.
Alison Harvey, Gherson and Co.
