Prof. Michael RAMSDEN’s book chapter “International Responsibility of War Profiteers for Trafficking in Persons” was published as part of a collection of essays addressing the criminal responsibility of war funder and profiteers, in Nina JØRGENSEN (ed.) The International Criminal Responsibility of War’s Funders and Profiteers (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Article 7(2) of the ICC Statute offers the first direct reference to ‘trafficking in persons’ as a facet of an international crime and thus provides an opportunity to give greater expression to this offence as a crime against humanity. However, much will depend on the relationship between ‘enslavement’ and trafficking, particularly whether all the practices associated with the latter can be sufficiently accommodated within the former. The Libya case provides the first opportunity for the ICC to clarify this relationship. With the Security Council now taking trafficking seriously, in imposing sanctions against high-level traffickers, the opportunity now presents itself for the ICC to break new ground and try individuals for the first time for trafficking as a subset of a crime against humanity. In doing so, the ICC would not only be showing that the ‘trafficking in persons’ reference in Article 7(2) is not merely theoretical but would also aid in progressing the conversation on trafficking as an ‘international’, and not merely a ‘transnational’, crime. This would certainly augment national and international efforts to end the impunity of war profiteers for trafficking in persons.

Read the book chapter here.