Jean Allain

Trafficking of persons for the removal of organs and the admission of guilt of a South African hospital

In November 2010, under the authority of the South African National Director of Public Prosecution, Netcare Kwa-Zulu (Pty) Limited entered into an agreement whereby it pleaded guilty to 102 counts related to charges stemming from having allowed its ‘employees and facilities to be used to conduct . . . illegal kidney transplant operations’. Charged along with this private company which was, in fact, the St Augustine’s Hospital, located in Durban, South Africa, were the parent company, Netcare, its CEO, Richard Friedland, and eight others: four transplant doctors, a nephrologist, two transplant administrative coordinators, and a translator. The admission of guilt relates to 109 illegal kidney transplant operations which took place between June 2001 and November 2003 within a scheme whereby Israeli citizens in need of kidney transplants would be brought to South Africa for transplants performed at St Augustine’s Hospital.

Slavery in international law : of human exploitation and trafficking

Slavery in International Law sets out the law related to slavery and lesser servitudes, including forced labour and debt bondage; thus developing an overall understanding of the term human ‘exploitation’, which is at the heart of the definition of trafficking.

The Law and Slavery: Prohibiting Human Exploitation

The Law and Slavery delivers Professor Jean Allain’s foundations which have led to the renaissance of the legal understanding of slavery which has transformed the landscape related to human exploitation during the early 21st Century.

The right to safe food: can the international food system deliver to the United Kingdom?

ABSTRACT This article considers for the first time the right to safe food as it relates to the United Kingdom. It does so by mapping the governance of the international food system – trade, health and human rights – and considering the fundamental vulnerabilities of that system. That done, the focus shifts to considering how such vulnerabilities will affect safe food in the United Kingdom. It does so by recognising the structural weakness inherent in ensuring safe food in the United Kingdom: British dependency for imports on an international food system which is finding it increasingly difficult to ensure stable supply chains. The net result of an increase in the volatility of supply chains is their vulnerability where safe food is concerned – with regard to food fraud, to contamination, to adulteration, etc. While recognising that the United Kingdom is, by necessity, reliant on the international food system, reference to recent consideration of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food might assist in centring not only issues of food safety as a consumer’s right, but assist in ensuring the right to safe food in the tumultuous times ahead.

Decolonisation as the Source of the Concepts of Jus Cogens and Obligations Erga Omnes

The scholarly consensus is that jus cogens emerged from the work of the UN International Law Commission on invalidation of treaties, and the International Court of Justice developed the concept of obligations erga omnes in its wake.

The Abolition of Forced Labour Convention

Having noted that the Slavery Convention, 1926, provides that all necessary measures shall be taken to prevent compulsory or forced labour from developing into conditions analogous to slavery and that the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery, 1956, provides for the complete abolition of debt bondage and serfdom, and

Acculturation Through the Middle Ages: The Islamic Law of Nations and its Place in the History of International Law

As part of a Research Handbook, what this chapter seeks to achieve is to draw attention to an important phenomena which transpired during millennium between Antiquity and the Age of Discovery, that is: the creation and sustained existence of a self-encompassing, system of international law meant to govern relations of the Islamic world and its ‘other’. The chapter demonstrates that the Islamic law of nations took from its predecessors and, through acculturation, gave to those who came after it, so that the echoes of the Siyar, the Islamic law of nations, are to be recognised as having been heard in the development of the Christian law of nations continuing through to contemporary international law. What clearly emerges from this study is that much research needs to be undertaken to understand the Islamic law of nations which played out during the Middle Ages and its contemporary relevance both historically and normatively.

Emmanuel Decaux. Les formes contemporaines de l'esclavage

One would expect no less from this study of contemporary forms of slavery by Emmanuel Decaux than that it identifies the fundamental puzzle at the heart of legal issues surrounding human exploitation, namely, that: there is a permanent contradiction between the successive attempts focused on �slavery in all its forms� as well as �the practices and institutions similar to� � which are at the heart of international instruments, and the programmes of action of international organisations and non-governmental organisations �; and the criminal law approach which requires a precise definition to incriminate; either domestically, in the name of the determinacy of the crimes and of the penalty, or internationally to allow for criminal cooperation. 1 It is to this fundamental paradox that Decaux devoted his attention during his lectures at The Hague Academy of International Law in 2008. These lectures were published in The Collected Courses of the Hague Academy series and were also reproduced as part of a pocketbook series. 2 The beauty of considering studies written in another language is to liberate oneself from assumptions � the given starting and end points of argument, and the continuity of well established discourses. If nothing else, surveying works in other languages opens the possibility of new revelations and discoveries � even for the most seasoned expert in an area � which come from narratives forged, in this case, in Paris, as opposed to a London or a Washington. With this in mind, Les formes contemporaines de l�esclavage does not disappoint. More so than in a monograph, the chapters of a study emanating from the Hague Academy stand alone, as each originates in a public lecture and thus must stand on its own merits. In seeking to work beyond the fundamental contradiction related to issues of human exploitation, the approach which �