Part I State Obligations and Rights Protected, Ch.II Civil and Political Rights, Art.6: Freedom from Slavery

Abstract

This chapter focuses on Article 6 of the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR), which protects one of the most important values in modern international human rights law, that is, the freedom from slavery. Article 6 is structured in three paragraphs that reflect the difficulty to draw the line between absolutely prohibited practices (slavery, involuntary servitude, trafficking, slave trade, forced and compulsory labor) and other forms of duties that might not be considered as forbidden (detainee’s work, military service, civic obligations, and so on). Therefore, the first paragraph contains a rule of absolute prohibition—or put positively, a rule of absolute protection of persons, with a special reference to women. The second and the third paragraphs delimit the scope of the prohibition. Paragraph 2 affirms the exception of forced labor “imposed by a competent court”; while Paragraph 3 enumerates four situations of compulsory work that do not constitute a prohibited conduct under Paragraph 1.