STATUTE LAW REVISION: SIXTEENTH ... - Law Commission

individual Acts giving effect to treaties concluded after that date. Treaties
concluded both before and after 1873 were referred to in that Act as, or were
deemed to be, “existing slave trade treaties”.
8.3 In the 1920s the Foreign Office recognised that most of, if not all, the existing
slave trade treaties were obsolete; in the Foreign Office’s phrase “ancient history”
which had “obviously lost all practical utility”. 6 Many of them were therefore
denounced by the British Government by agreement with the foreign
governments concerned: treaties with South and Central American countries in
1921 and a substantial further number in 1922. Although regarded as obsolete,
a number were left untouched, some because they consisted of isolated articles
in commercial treaties which were still needed, a few for political reasons and the
balance probably because they were overlooked at the time.
8.4 The bilateral treaties had become obsolete for two reasons: first, because the
conditions giving rise to them had radically changed - the slave trade was no
longer the major problem which it had been in the nineteenth century; and,
secondly, because of the increasing number of multilateral treaties concluded by
the major powers which undertook to carry out their own measures for
suppressing the trade. 7 These culminated in the International Convention with
the object of securing the Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade 8 (the Slavery
Convention) drawn up under the auspices of the League of Nations in 1926. The
protocol of 1953 adapted its terminology &c to the United Nations and its organs.
The Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and
Practices Similar to Slavery, Supplementary to the International Convention
signed at Geneva on September 25, 1926 (the Supplementary Convention) was
concluded in 1956. 9 A further development was the provisions for suppression of
slave trading contained in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
(Law of the Sea Convention) dated 1982. 10
149 Obligations under international Conventions
8.1 Under the Slavery Convention parties undertake to prevent and suppress the
slave trade and to bring about the complete abolition of slavery; and to adopt
measures to prevent and suppress the embarkation, disembarkation and
transport of slaves in their territorial waters and on all vessels flying their
respective flags. Under the Supplementary Convention the act of conveying or
6 Memoranda of 21 March, 23 March and 13 April 1921. The relevant files at the Public
Record Office on which the history in this paragraph is based are FO372/1331-2, 1567
(1920), 372/1568 (1921), 372/1819 and 372/1888 (1922).
7 See the Berlin Convention of 1885 (fifteen signatories including European nations and the
United States); the Brussels Convention of 1890 (seventeen signatories) (this was an
“existing slave trade treaty “ under the Slave Trade Act 1873 and was the last to be given
effect to in accordance with that Act: see SR&0 dated 9 May 1892, Rev. 1948, XXI, p.31);
the Convention of St Germain of 1919 (seven signatories including the United Kingdom,
which abrogated inter se the provisions of the two earlier Conventions).
8 See Cmd 9797.
9 See Cmd 9870. Over 85 states, including the UK, are parties to the Slavery Convention,
and over 102 to the Supplementary Convention: see Hansard (HC) 12 July 1989, vol 156
col 550.
10 See Cmnd 8941.
93