Human Trafficking Under the European Convention on Human Rights: Rantsev and Onwards

The European Convention on Human Rights ECHR does not contain the term human trafficking in its text. The term has been included to Article 4 of the ECHR for the first time in 2010, through the Rantsev decision of the European Court of Human Rights ECtHR . The fact that all the applications regarding human trafficking submitted by women reveals the relationship between human trafficking and gender. Due to limited number of the applications and widely criticised decisions, the Court’s Article 4 jurisprudence is considered to be immature and have limited effect. This article aims to establish ECtHR’s approach to the human trafficking phenomenon as well as positive obligations of the Member States and concrete rights derived from Article 4 regarding human trafficking. In order to bring out the meaning of the term human trafficking in the accounts of the Court, definitions and the limits of the legal terms originally included in Article 4 should be determined and the distinctions between them and human trafficking should be clarified. This last emphasize is the reason why this work shall also be considered as a general review of the evolution of Article 4 jurisprudence. This work can be seen as a contribution to a major gap of the related Turkish literature. Besides, it aims to show the inevitable connections between gender unequality and the Article 4.