Prohibition of Slavery and Forced Labour in UK Law

Where "forced or compulsory labour" is concerned, the menace of a penalty can be exerted in various ways. Constraint can be mental or physical. Where it is alleged that one person has been compulsorily employed by another, the level of pay he or she has received, if any, may have evidential importance. It may point to coercion; it may bear on an employee's ability to escape from his or her employer's control. On its own, however, a derisory level of wages is not tantamount to coercion.

Exploitation of fellow human beings in any of the ways criminalised by the legislation represents deliberate degrading of a fellow human being or human beings. It is far from straight forward for them even to complain about the way they are being treated, let alone to report their plight to the authorities so that the offenders might be brought to justice.

Next I should emphasise that it is plain (indeed uncontentious) that there are circumstances in which a conscientious objector may rightly claim that punishment for draft evasion would amount to persecution: where the military service to which he is called involves acts, with which he may be associated, which are contrary to basic rules of human conduct; where the conditions of military service are themselves so harsh as to amount to persecution on the facts; where the punishment in question is disproportionately harsh or severe.

It seems to be clear too that any time spent in custody prior to sentencing should be taken fully into account, not simply by means of a form of words but by means of an arithmetical deduction when assessing the length of the sentence that is to be served from the date of sentencing.

There is compelling support for the view that refugee status should be accorded to one who has refused to undertake compulsory military service on the grounds that such service would or might require him to commit atrocities or gross human rights abuses or participate in a conflict condemned by the international community, or where refusal to serve would earn grossly excessive or disproportionate punishment: see, for example, Zolfagharkhani v Canada (Minister of Employment and Immigration) [1993] FC 540; Ciric v Canada (Minister of Employment and Immigration) [1994] 2 FC 65; Canas-Segovia v Immigration and Naturalization Service (1990) 902 F 2d 717; UNHCR Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status, paras 169, 171.

It is plain enough that she had a general knowledge, in general terms, of what was going on. But, on the judge's findings, her active participation was relatively limited, even if she could be described as “the matriarch”. In effect, she had left strategic decisions to others and she personally had been kind to complainants; certainly some of them had in evidence spoken out favourably of her.

The decision of the competent authority under the NRM process was an essentially factual decision and, for the reasons given, both the FTT and the UT were better placed to decide whether the appellant was the victim of trafficking than was the authority. The more difficult question is the precise relevance of that factual determination to the appeal before the tribunals.