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Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery

The Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery (ACE) was a permanent committee of the League of Nations, inaugurated in 1933. It was the first permanent slavery committee of the League of Nations, which was founded after a decade of work adressing the issue of slavery by temporary committees within the League.

Dhows were used to transport goods and slaves.
Pearl divers in the Persian Gulf. At the time, the pearl industry was dominated by slave labor.
Oil field 1932. The British Foreign Office unsuccessfully asked the Iraq Petroleum Company not to use slave labor in the Gulf.

The ACE conducted a global investigation concerning slavery, slave trade and force labor, and recommended solutions to address the issue. Its work lay the ground for the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery of 1956.

History

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Foundation

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The League of Nations had conducted an active work against chattel slavery and slave trade from the early 1920s. The investigation of the Temporary Slavery Commission (TSC) had resulted in the introduction of the 1926 Slavery Convention.[1] In 1932 the Committee of Experts on Slavery (CES) was established to investigate the efficiency of the 1926 Slavery Convention.[2] The result convinced the League of the need to establish a permanent committee to address the issue.

The ACE were not to be authorized to conduct investigations directly, but only to accept documented information from governments.[3] It was to be purely advisory and its proceedings confidential, composed of seven independent experts, appointed indenfenitely, who were to study the documented evidence and submit reports to suggest methods to approve the work to end slavery and slave trade.[4] The slavery adressed were to be chattel slavery, not forced labor. [5]

In 1933 the Committee of Experts on Slavery (CES) established the first permanent slavery committee, the Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery (ACE).[6] The ACE held its first meeting the following year, and met annually five times between 1934 and 1938.

The Anti-Slavery Society celebrated the establishment of the ACE, which was established on the centenary of the of Slavery Abolition Act 1833, as the final end of slavery, Reginald Coupland expressed the hope that "the appropriate machinery" to ensure the execution of the 1926 Slavery Convention had been created, and that he had no doubt that "except perhaps in remote and unsettled regions of the world beyond the reach of civilized opinion, the final eradication....of slavery" had been assured.[7]

Activity

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The ACE conducted a major international investigation on chattel slavery and slave trade. The committee asked for reports from all member countries of the League of Nations, including the major colonial empires of the time. The governments were asked to report of all forms of slavery and slave trade taking place within the territories under their control, which the member countries of League as subject of the 1926 Slavery Convention were expected to actively oppose.

The issues discussed were the Mui tsai issue, debt bondage and serfdom; the status of women and discriminatory marriage customs were debated, but a difficult issue, and postphoned in 1936.[8]

The ACE requested the British Colonial Office to interview all former slaves in Africa why they had remained with their former owners and investigate what had happened to the slaves that did leave; the colonial officers obeyed by order from their governors, and the 1936 Report to the ACE were particularly detailed.[9]

The Italians reported to the ACE that all former slaves in Italian Tripolitania - slavery in Libya was since long formally abolished - were free to leave their former Arab owners if they wished, but that they stayed because they were socially depressed; and that in the oases of Cyrenaica and the interiour of Sanusiya, the Trans-Saharan slave trade had been erased in parallell with Italian conquest, during which 900 slaves had been freed in the Kufra slave market; that the slaves in Italian Eritrea were now given salary and thus no longer slaves, and that the slavery and slave trade in Somalia had now been abolished.[10]

France reported that slavery had been abolished in all French territories in Africa, including Slavery in Mauritania.[11] The Netherlands reported that slavery in the Dutch East Indies was eradicated, except for remote areas in Borneo and New Guinea were Dutch control was nominal.[12] Spain reported that they had abolished the slave trade in Morocco, but avoided mentioning slavery as such.[13] Belgium and Portugal replied ACE that they had nothing further to add after their 1932 report.[14]

China reported that slavery in China did not excist except for the Mui tsai system, which was a very marginal phenomena.[15] Egypt answered the ACE that there were no longer any slavery in Egypt, and that no new slaves could be imported via the ongoing Red Sea slave trade to Egypt since they policed the waters of the Red Sea outside Egypt, preventing any slave trade.[16] At this point in time, Saudi Arabia was the biggest slave nation in the world, but it was protected from investigation by its ally Britain, who avoided to give any clear information to avoid damaging their relationship to Saudi, and gave only vague answers that Islam encourage manummission.[17]

Slavery in Yemen were given attention in the ACO. The report to ACE about Hadhramaut described the excistence of Chinese women trafficked from Singapore for enslavement as concubines, Indian women trafficked to Hadrhamaut to be sold by their husbands, and Indian children officially taken there for religious studies, only to be sold upon arrival.[18] The British tried to convince the coastal local rulers of the Aden Protectorate to sign an agreement to bann the slave trade, but by January 1939, few had done so.[19]

ACE was dominated by Britain via George Maxwell, who became the dominating member of the ACE. Maxwell successfully advocated for the ACE to follow the predeceeding TSC's definition of slavery as exclusively referring to chattel slavery and ownership of humans, a definition of slavery inherited by the TSC, and which excluded all other forms of forced labor in order to avoid conflict.[20]

George Maxwell focused his attention on slaves captured by slave traders; for people born slaves, he advocated manumission as revard for good behaviour justified by passages from the Quran.[21] The Quran was relevant in the context since chattel slavery by this point in time excisted mainly in Muslim lands.

In 1938 George Maxwell of the ACE concluded that slave raids were almost nonexistent; that slave trade were significantly reduced; that the chattel slavery in the Aden Protectorate and the Persian Gulf were under control; and that in regard to slavery in Saudi Arabia and slavery in Yemen, nothing more could be expected.[22] In February 1939, it was decided that the Sixth meeting of the ACE were to be postphoned until later that same year; however by the outbreak of World War II in 3 September 1939 the activity of the ACE were effectively ended. [23]

Aftermath and legacy

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The work of the ACE collected information only from published sources, petititions, personal experience, government reports and vetted NGOs; and while it was inhibited by the colonial powers' (such as Britain's reluctance to interfere in the chattel slavery in the Arabian Peninsula), it did result in both the British and the French colonial powers refining their anti slavery laws policies.[24]

The global investigation of the occurrence of slavery and slave trade performed by the ACE between 1934 and 1939 was interupted by the outbreak of the World War II, but it was the foundation for the work against slavery performed by the UN after the war.[25]

When the League of Nations was succeeded by the United Nations (UN) after the end of the World War II, Charles Wilton Wood Greenidge of the Anti-Slavery International worked for the UN to continue the investigation of global slavery conducted by the ACE of the League, and in February 1950 the Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery of the United Nations was inaugurated,[26] which ultimately resulted in the introduction of the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery.[27]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. USA: AltaMira Press. p. 100-121
  2. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. USA: AltaMira Press. p. 197-215
  3. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 216
  4. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 216
  5. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 216
  6. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. p. 216
  7. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 217
  8. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 279
  9. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 279
  10. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 226
  11. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 226
  12. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 226
  13. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 226
  14. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 226
  15. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 226
  16. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 262
  17. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 262
  18. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 270
  19. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 304
  20. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 447
  21. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 278
  22. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. p. 289
  23. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. p. 291
  24. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. 447
  25. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. p. 294
  26. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. p. 323-324
  27. ^ Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Storbritannien: AltaMira Press. p. 326
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