인신매매에 관한 국제법의 발달과정

The trafficking issue poses a number of problems to the Korean society without exception, ranging from the Japanese military ‘comfort women’ issue to migrant sex trafficking. In an effort to fill the gap in the academic researches, this article examines the main features and trends in the development of international trafficking law with reference to a series of international treaties, starting from the 1904 White Slave Traffic Agreement up to the 2000 Trafficking Protocol. In the late nineteenth century, encouraged particularly by the abolition of slavery and slave trade, various social and women’s movements raised the problem of prostitution/sex trade as one revolving around sex, sexuality, class, State and race. In Britain, for instance, the success in the elimination of the State regulation on prostitution led to the organization of international campaigns concerning the cross-border movement of prostitutes, the so-called ‘white slavery’. The eventual conclusion of the 1904 Agreement and the 1910 Convention on white slave traffic had been followed by yet other treaties during the League of Nations period, now with a new name ‘traffic in women and children’ given to the issue. These international treaties set up an international mechanism for cooperation among States to suppress trafficking by means of information sharing, criminalization under national laws, judicial assistance, control over recruitment agencies and national boundaries among others, while providing victims with support for repatriation. Yet the question of prostitution itself had been left for domestic legislation of each contracting State, becoming a source of intense controversy even today. Subsequently, the 1949 UN Convention prohibited exploitation of prostitution and forced prostitution as well as trafficking in every human being. While the 1949 Convention was not taken generally as a real success in terms of the fight against trafficking, the human rights based approach to the issue has been particularly noticeable in its aftermath. Moreover, the resurgence of interest on the issue in the post-cold period and in the midst of globalization led to the adoption of the Trafficking Protocol in 2000. While the Protocol consolidates the previous international treaties and represents a renewed effort to prevent and prosecute trafficking and to protect its victims, the relationship between prostitution and trafficking, and the boundaries between trafficking and slavery, forced labor and other related concepts continue to present challenges in the legal response to the problem.