More than 40 million people were living in modern slavery when Ambassador Michel Veuthey told a forum that the world is not on track. He spoke 100 years after the 1926 Slavery Convention, the treaty he says still does not reach every ship, mine, battlefield, screen and home. The first deadline set for ending it has already passed. [VERIFY: the exact figure and the event date are not legible in the source images and need checking against the Order's own text before publication.]

Key takeaways

The figure the Order of Malta used is large, and the deadline attached to it has already slipped. SDG target 8.7 committed the world to ending child labour and human trafficking by 2025, and modern slavery by 2030. The first deadline has passed and the second is four years away.

Behind those numbers, Veuthey said, are faces. A fisherman held at sea for years on a warrant that never enters port. A girl sold into marriage. A domestic worker whose passport has been taken. A boy handed a rifle instead of a schoolbook. A woman raped as a weapon of war and then trafficked across a border.

We are not on track.

He tied the shortfall to enforcement rather than ambition. His argument was that the legal instruments exist, and that the budgets and the implementation do not.

Trafficking is governed by more than one treaty, and treating any single instrument as sufficient is the central error. The Protocol against Transnational Organized Crime gave the world a common definition of trafficking and has been ratified by nearly every state, he said, citing Ambassador Richmond's remarks the same afternoon. Its three pillars, prevention, protection and prosecution, he added, remain the right ones, but the protocol was never meant to stand alone.

He then worked outward through the legal field. From the 1926 Slavery Convention and its supplementary convention, through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the prohibition of slavery admits no exception. The Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women protects women and girls from trafficking and exploitation. The Convention on the Rights of the Child and its two optional protocols, on children in armed conflict and on the sale and sexual exploitation of children, protect those most at risk.

He placed the victim at the centre of that field.

Human rights law reminds us that a victim is first a rights-holder, not merely a witness for the prosecution.

Labour law, he argued, reaches where criminal law often does not. The ILO Forced Labour Convention and its 2014 protocol, the Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour and the Domestic Workers Convention give governments tools for prevention, meaning labour inspection, fair recruitment and access to remedy.

Maritime law, he said, must not be forgotten. The Law of the Sea Convention obliges every flag state to prevent and punish the transport of slaves, and allows warships to visit vessels suspected of slave trading. The Maritime Labour Convention, the ILO Work in Fishing Convention and the FAO Port State Measures Agreement can turn ports into checkpoints for human dignity.

Environmental law, he added, is increasingly part of the same fight. Illegal fishing, illegal logging and illegal mining very often rely on forced labour. Climate change and environmental degradation push communities into displacement and into the hands of traffickers.

Where we fight environmental crime, we must also look for the enslaved people behind it.

The same law applies in armed conflict, and armed conflict is where child soldiers come from. The Geneva Conventions and their additional protocols prohibit slavery and the recruitment of children. Under the Rome Statute, enslavement and sexual slavery are crimes against humanity and war crimes, and conscripting children under fifteen is a war crime. He named women and men subjected to sexual violence in conflict as victims of modern slavery too. He cited Security Council resolution 2334 and the International Criminal Court's work in the Lubanga case on recruitment, along with the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Veuthey named two fields he wanted added to the frame, and both are growth areas for recruiters. The first is cyber law, because trafficking now recruits, advertises and exploits online. Young Africans, among many others, have been lured by fake job offers into scam compounds in Southeast Asia and forced into online fraud.

The second is refugee and migration law.

Those fleeing along the routes through the Sahara, across the Mediterranean and over the Gulf of Aden must find protection, not exploitation.

He also pointed to the Convention against Corruption and to anti-money laundering and asset recovery rules, which he said can dismantle the business model. Confiscated assets, he argued, should go to compensate survivors, and the principle of non-punishment must be respected.

His reasoning runs in one direction.

Because slavery is a web, our response must also be a web. My message today is simple: we must use all legal instruments, international, regional, sub-regional and national, together. No single treaty, no single country and no single ministry can do this alone.

Veuthey argued that Africa has built a strong framework of its own, and that regional and subregional instruments bring international law closer to people. The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights prohibits slavery. The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child protects children from trafficking and from taking part in hostilities. The Maputo Protocol commits states to protect women from trafficking, and the Kampala Convention protects internally displaced persons, who are exposed to exploitation.

He listed the Ouagadougou Action Plan, ECOWAS, the East African Community, SADC, and the Khartoum and Rabat Processes, which he said give neighbours ways to cooperate, share evidence and protect victims across borders.

African justice has already ruled on the question. In 2008, the ECOWAS Court of Justice held Niger responsible for failing to protect Hadijatou Mani from slavery. That ruling, he argued, is the clearest evidence that the continent does not lack law. What it lacks is implementation.

His answer was blunt, and he aimed it at the room.

Excellencies, dear friends, we do not lack treaties. What we too often lack is political will and implementation. And political will is measured in budgets and in results, not in speeches.

A treaty that is ratified but not translated into national law protects no one. A law that is adopted but not funded, and not taught to judges, police, labour inspectors and border guards, protects no one either. He named the missing step as domestication, which means harmonising definitions, setting meaningful penalties, and giving victims real access to protection, residence, compensation and justice.

He pointed to Kenya's Counter Trafficking in Persons Act, and to similar laws across the continent, as showing the way. The task now, he said, is to apply them fully and to bring these separate bodies of law into line with each other. He attached three operational tests: anti-trafficking units must know how to identify a victim, businesses must show their supply chains through human rights due diligence, and the victim stays at the centre.

That last test was the shortest sentence he used.

Survivors are not statistics.

He closed with four requests, addressed in order to four different audiences.

First, to states: ratify the instruments you have not yet ratified, and implement them.

Second, to international, human rights, labour, maritime and humanitarian organisations: help states use them together, and break down the silos between them.

Third, to the media: mobilise public opinion and public conscience. Modern slavery must be spoken about in international and local media, and in local languages, so that warnings reach those at risk before traffickers do. Religious leaders and communities, he added, can awaken consciences, protect and rehabilitate the vulnerable, and use their moral influence to help prevent and abolish modern slavery. Their role should be explicitly recognised in the forum's Declaration of Principles.

Fourth, to all of us here: keep survivors at the centre of everything we do.

The pledge he marked is a century old.

A hundred years ago, States promised the complete abolition of slavery in all its forms. Slavery persists because the law has not yet reached every ship, every mine, every battlefield, every screen and every home. Our task is to make sure that it does, and to keep, at last, the promise of 1926.

The Sovereign Order of Malta wished the forum fruitful and courageous, and thanked those in the room for their part in the effort.

Ratification, domestic application and the 2030 target are the three checkable commitments. Veuthey asked states that have not ratified the outstanding instruments to do so, but attached no deadline to that request. He named Kenya's Counter Trafficking in Persons Act as showing the way elsewhere, without specifying any commitment from Kenyan authorities. The binding date remains the 2030 deadline in SDG target 8.7.

The Order of Malta told a forum that more than 40 million people live in modern slavery. [VERIFY: exact figure not legible in the source images.] The figure was tied to Sustainable Development Goal target 8.7, which committed the world to ending child labour and human trafficking by 2025, and modern slavery by 2030.

Michel Veuthey is Ambassador to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the Sovereign Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta. He is also the order's Deputy Permanent Observer to the United Nations in Geneva, based in Grand-Lancy.

He asked states to ratify the international instruments they have not yet ratified, and to implement the ones they already have. His central argument was that the shortage is not of treaties. It is of political will, which he defined as budgets and results rather than speeches, and of the domestic law, funding and training that turn a ratified text into something that protects anyone.

He said trafficking now recruits, advertises and exploits online, and that young Africans have been lured by fake job offers into scam compounds in Southeast Asia and forced into online fraud. He named cyber law as one of two fields he wanted added to the frame, alongside refugee and migration law covering the routes through the Sahara, across the Mediterranean and over the Gulf of Aden.

In 2008, the ECOWAS Court of Justice held Niger responsible for failing to protect Hadijatou Mani from slavery. Veuthey cited it as evidence that African justice has spoken on the question, alongside regional instruments including the Maputo Protocol, the Kampala Convention, the Ouagadougou Action Plan and the Khartoum and Rabat Processes.

The pledge Veuthey marked is a century old, and the next deadline on it expires in 2030. The question he put to the room was not whether the law exists. It is whether a fisherman's warrant, a domestic worker's passport and a schoolboy's rifle will ever be reached by it.

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