This chapter delves into one specific crime—enslavement as a crime against humanity. It argues that the law has drawn heavily on civil and political rights, neglecting economic, social, and cultural ones. The law surrounding slavery furthermore has drawn on some basic contrasts: notably separating the concept of ‘human’ (a human being) from ‘person’ (a bearer of legal personality and rights). Another distinction is between ‘status’ and ‘condition’. The law has tended to focus on status, i.e., legal non-recognition of personhood, which has affinities with civil and political rights. The chapter argues that the law has given much less attention to ‘condition’, which looks at the person’s material conditions in fact, and which has affinities with economic and social rights. A re-imagined law better encompassing economic and social rights would be more ideologically neutral, more in keeping with human rights law, and more in keeping with the lived experiences of African would-be migrants. Thus, this chapter emphasises that recognition in law is not enough; one must also look at the material conditions of life, the deprivation of which enables enslavement.
THE INDIVISIBILITY OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES