of United Nations treaty bodies,37 to indicate a general consensus among States that trafficking is, in all its forms, a serious violation of human rights. the meaning of article 3 (a) of the Palermo Protocol and article 4 (a) of the Anti-Trafficking Convention, falls within the scope of article 4 of the Convention” (para. 282). An important, additional confirmation of this is provided by a recent judgement of the European Court of Human Rights. In Rantsev v. Cyprus and Russia, the Court was required to consider whether trafficking was included in article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour. It concluded that “there can be no doubt that trafficking threatens the human dignity and fundamental freedoms of its victims and cannot be considered compatible with a democratic society and the values expounded in the Convention… the Court concludes that trafficking itself, within While it is becoming easier to point to the existence of a generally applicable norm prohibiting trafficking, it remains difficult to identify the nature, scope and effect of this norm with absolute certainty. Complicating factors include the complexity of the trafficking phenomenon; the range of rules involved or potentially involved; and the difficult question of State responsibility for acts that often lie outside their direct sphere of control. The Trafficking Principles and Guidelines are an important contribution to the difficult but important task of identifying the scope and fleshing out the normative content of an international prohibition on trafficking. [is] an act that is contrary to universal human rights”); General Assembly resolution 61/180 on improving the coordination of efforts against trafficking in persons, preamble (“contemporary forms of slavery violate human rights and … trafficking in persons impairs the enjoyment of human rights”); Commission on Human Rights resolution 2004/45 on trafficking in women and girls, preamble (“eliminate all forms of sexual violence and trafficking … which both violate and impair or nullify the enjoyment of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of victims of trafficking”); Human Rights Council resolution 11/3 on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, preamble (“trafficking in persons violates human rights and impairs the enjoyment of them”); Council of Europe, Recommendation Rec(2002)5 on the protection of women against violence, adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 30 April 2002 (defines “violence against women” as including “trafficking in women for the purposes of sexual exploitation and economic exploitation and sex tourism” and states that “violence against women both violates and impairs or nullifies the enjoyment of their human rights and fundamental freedoms”). 4.2. TRAFFICKING AS A FORM OF SEXBASED DISCRIMINATION AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN38 The Human Rights Committee, in its concluding observations, has repeatedly identified trafficking as constituting a potential violation of articles 3, 8, 24 and 26 of the Covenant: Barbados (CCPR/C/BRB/CO/3, para. 8); Kosovo (Serbia) (CCPR/C/UNK/CO/1, para. 16); Paraguay (CCPR/C/PRY/CO/2, para. 13); Brazil (CCPR/C/BRA/CO/2, para. 15); and Slovenia (CCPR/ CO/84/SVN, para. 11). 37 It can be argued that trafficking constitutes a violation of international law because it is contrary to the international prohibition on sex-based discrimination. A refinement of this position identifies trafficking as a form of violence against women and, therefore, a violation of the norm prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex. These various claims are analysed below with particular reference to the work and functions of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. For a more detailed consideration of this issue, see Gallagher, International Law of Human Trafficking, chap. 3. For a comprehensive analysis of article 6 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the related practice of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, see Janie Chuang, article 6, in Commentary to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (forthcoming). 38 COMMENTARY 39