The Article of The Declaration of Human Rights
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 4
Article 4 begins the Declaration’s list of specific rights. While slavery as an accepted system of labor has been eradicated, slave-like forms of labor continue to exist. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has a Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, its causes and consequences. Calling slavery a “grave and persistent problem,” UNHCHR defines contemporary slavery as including “debt bondage, serfdom, forced labour, child labour and child servitude, trafficking of persons and human organs, sexual slavery, children in armed conflict, sale of children, forced marriage and the sale of wives, migrant work, the exploitation of prostitution, and certain practices under apartheid and colonial regimes.” UNHCHR recently expressed its concern, for example, that some Haitian children are being sold, trafficked or kept in slave-like conditions.