Tracking the Implementation Gap states’ domestic affairs, creating tensions between commitment and enforcement that provided the preconditions for a substantial implementation gap. II MAPPING IMPLEMENTATION OF INTERNATIONAL COMMITMENTS TO PROHIBIT HUMAN EXPLOITATION Through the twentieth century, states undertook specific antislavery commitment, writ large, to criminalise slavery and the slave trade, 9 forced labour, 10 institutions and practices similar to slavery, 11 servitude, 12 and trafficking in persons. 13 However, without comprehensive and systematic research tracking and assessing compliance with these obligations across member states, very little evidence existed of the extent to which the international community of states had implemented these commitments domestically. This allowed the myth of slavery’s universal domestic illegality to continue unchallenged, shifting focus away from the fundamental legislative reforms needed to prohibit human exploitation within states. To assess the extent to which antislavery commitments (as well as commitments concerning related forms of human exploitation) enshrined in international law are prohibited at the domestic level, we compiled the nationallevel legislation of all 193 UN member states relevant to the prohibition of slavery, servitude, forced labour, institutions and practices similar to slavery, forced labour and trafficking in persons to create the Antislavery in Domestic Legislation database. 14 From over 1000 domestic statutes, we analysed thousands of provisions to establish the extent to which each state had prohibited these forms of exploitation and satisfied their international obligations. Analysis of domestic legislation across the world’s countries revealed widespread gaps in states’ efforts to fulfil a basic requirement of treaties addressing human exploitation: prohibition 9 10 11 12 13 14 Obligations to prohibit slavery are found in the 1926 Slavery Convention (n 3); Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery, opened for signature 7 September 1956, 266 UNTS 3 (entered into force 30 April 1957) (‘1956 Supplementary Convention’); International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, opened for signature 16 December 1966, 999 UNTS 171 (entered into force 23 March 1976) (‘ICCPR’). Other relevant regional human rights instrument include: African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, opened for signature 27 June 1981, OAU Doc CAB/LEG/67/3 rev 5 (entered into force 21 October 1986) (‘African Charter’); American Convention on Human Rights, opened for signature 22 November 1969, OAS TS 36 (entered into force 18 July 1978) (‘American Convention’); European Convention on Human Rights, opened for signature 4 November 1950, ETS 9 (entered into force 3 September 1953) (‘European Convention’). Obligations to prohibit forced labour are found in the Convention (No 29) Concerning Forced or Compulsory Labour, As Modified by the Final Articles Revision Convention, 1946, opened for signature 28 June 1930, 39 UNTS 55 (entered into force 1 May 1932) (‘1930 Forced Labour Convention’). See also African Charter (n 9); American Convention (n 9); European Convention (n 9). Namely, serfdom, debt bondage, practices involving the transfer of women in the context of marriage and delivery of children for exploitation: 1956 Supplementary Convention (n 9) art 1. Obligations to prohibit servitude are found in the ICCPR (n 9). See also African Charter (n 9); American Convention (n 9); European Convention (n 9). Obligations to prohibit trafficking are found in a variety of conventions addressing trafficking, culminating in the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, opened for signature 15 November 2000, 2237 UNTS 319 (entered into force 25 December 2003) (‘Palermo Protocol’). Schwarz and Allain (n 7). 161