Our methodology
Antislavery Legislation
The Antislavery in Domestic Legislation database collects and analyses the domestic legislation of all 193 United Nations Member States with regard to five severe forms of human exploitation enshrined in international law:
- Slavery and the slave trade
- Institutions and practices similar to slavery
- Servitude
- Forced or compulsory labour
- Trafficking in persons
Forced Marriage Legislation
The Forced Marriage in Domestic Legislation database collects and analyses the domestic legislation of all 193 United Nations Member States with regard to forced marriage and four related areas of concern:
- Forced marriage
- Consent to marriage
- Servile matrimonial transactions
- Marriage trafficking
- Minimum age for marriage
Both databases collated the domestic legislative provisions contained in national-level laws and compile these with States’ international commitments and other information that provides insights into patterns and trends in ratification and legislation. The databases are intended both to make global antislavery and forced marriage laws more accessible and to assist States in fulfilling their international commitments to tackle these practices.
The data collection and analysis methodology is outlined below, however any queries about the project methodology may be directed to Dr Katarina Schwarz at katarina.schwarz@nottingham.ac.uk
Data collection
All data included in the databases has been drawn from publicly available, online sources. Searches were conducted in multiple languages to locate relevant legislation, and provisions translated by project assistants or automatic translation software where necessary. Relevant databases and repositories, as well as key reports and official documents, were also reviewed to identify relevant legislation cited in these texts.
Ratification and membership data for international instruments is drawn directly from the United Nations Treaty Collection, the International Labour Organisation’s NORMLEX information system, and official websites of relevant regional organisations. Domestic legislation has been drawn from a wide variety of online sources. Among many others, the following sources have been included in our data collection: the Awad Report UN Doc E/4168/Rev.1, 1966; the Engen Report, UN Doc E/2673. 1955; the QUB Slavery in Domestic Jurisdictions dataset; UNODC’s SHERLOC database; ILO’s NATLEX database; the Constitute Project; US Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Reports; the Walk Free Foundation’s Country Data; and States’ own legislative websites.
Legislative provisions relevant to the practices and areas of concern considered in each project were then extracted from the texts. Provisions were selected not only for direct references to the relevant practices, but for their relation to some element of the practice in question. Thus, the approach to extracting information from statutes was over-inclusive, and a range of provisions only peripherally related to the areas of concern were included for analysis. When working with foreign language documents, key word searches in the original language supplemented the review of the translated text to ensure that any relevant provision was identified and extracted.
In total, over 700 pieces of domestic legislation have been collected to date within the Antislavery in Domestic Legislation database and over 550 pieces of legislation have been collected within the Forced Marriage in Domestic Legislation database. In each case, thousands of relevant provisions were drawn from their texts for consideration in the analysis.
The analysis
Antislavery legislation
The database, as it stands, does not make any assessments on the effectiveness of domestic legislative provisions, or their alignment with international definitions. Rather, it assesses whether a State has a provision addressing the relevant form of exploitation. Under this approach, a State with any legislation addressing the form of exploitation, in whole or in part, is registered as having legislative provisions in place on the basis of a binary scoring system.
Findings presented in the summary materials relate to the analysis of these binary scores, and are therefore based on over-inclusive decisions as to what counts as a relevant provision addressing the practice in question. International definitions from the international instruments identified above form the touchstone for broad considerations of relevance, with provisions covering specifically addressing even a subset of the practices counting as a positive result. These definitions are addressed in greater depth in the Definitions Resource. Thus, conclusions drawn on the existence of legislation in relation to each kind of exploitation for each State are over-inclusive. States with provisions that do not fully encompass the relevant practice as defined in international law are still identified as having provisions in place.
It is therefore up to users to assess the terms of the provisions outlined in the country pages, to make value judgements on the extent to which this satisfies the State’s international obligations.
Forced marriage legislation
There is no international instrument of universal scope establishing a prohibition of forced marriage or defining the concept. Rather, a collection of international instruments establish obligations and standards in relation to consent to marriage, minimum age for marriage, and servile matrimonial transactions. This means that there is no authoritative, international touchstone for determining which domestic legislative provisions are relevant to evaluating forced marriage in domestic legislation globally.
Analysis of domestic legislation in the FMLD was conducted in two phases. The first considered individual legislative provisions to capture the dynamic interplay between the application, substance, and consequences of each article. For each provision, 366 unique variables were coded, organised into seventeen thematic areas. This was then aggregated at the country level for consideration of the five core practices and concerns examined in this study. Country-level analysis provides general insights into the extent to which the five practices and concerns are addressed at the domestic level globally. This country-level analysis is the current focus of the database. However, this will be supplemented with more nuanced analysis of the construction of different provisions within States based on disaggregated, provision-level coding in the future.
Country scores included in the database are aggregates based on a defined set of indicators drawn from the dataset.
Limitations
Although the databases incorporate legislation from all 193 UN Member States, it should be recognised that there are challenges to the global collection and analysis of legislation that had to be faced in the process. Issues relating to the availability of legislation, languages of publication, difficulties in translating legal provisions, and differences in the structures of national legal systems, should all be noted as inherent challenges to developing a global dataset of domestic legislation. These challenges have been offset by utilising key search terms in multiple searches, triangulating sources, and the use of translation software to translate material to English where necessary.
It should also be noted that the database focuses specifically on national legislation. The result of this is that state-level provisions in federal jurisdictions are not considered in the analysis. The direct application of international norms at the domestic level in dualist States is also not accounted for in considering the presence of provisions.
Further challenges arise in the attempt to create a quantitative metric for assessing States’ legislation, particularly where State practice diverges substantially and where the boundaries of a specific practice are unclear.
The Antislavery in Domestic Legislation database uses the codified requirements of international law as a benchmark. However, rather than making determinations on States’ compliance, the database simply presents the relevant legislative provisions, and identifies whether any provision of the relevant type has been enacted. The quantitative measure is therefore a binary score representing whether legislation exists, rather than a score determining the extent to which the provision aligns with, or satisfies, the international obligation to prohibit the practice in question.
The Forced Marriage in Domestic Legislation database refers to the codified requirements of international law as a benchmark wherever possible. However, the lack of in international instrument addressing forced marriage or an authoritative international legal definition of the practices poses a significant challenge. Nonetheless, firm international obligations do exist in relation to several of the concerns considered in this database. Like the Antislavery in Domestic Legislation database, the Forced Marriage in Domestic Legislation database adopts a primarily categorical approach to domestic law, in the first instance simply assessing whether or not legislation of a particular type exists in each national jurisdiction. These categorical codes are then aggregated to provide a country score which reflects the specific methodology outlined above. This should be taken only as an assessment against the defined criteria, rather than a value judgement on the quality of a country’s law.
Acknowledging the limitations of this data collection exercise, we invite States and other experts to contribute additional evidence and legislation to the databases. This is a live project, which continuously seeks to improve the quality of the evidence available for analysis and use by stakeholders. New evidence is welcome and can be submitted (and gaps in existing evidence flagged) through the Contribute page.