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Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29) - Kiribati (RATIFICATION: 2000)

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Referring to its previous comments, the Committee takes note of the information provided by the Government in relation to minor communal services undertaken within the Mwaneaba system as well as to the application of section 122 of the Employment and Industrial Relations Code, 2015, concerning the exaction of forced or compulsory labour.

Articles 1(1), 2(1) and 25 of the Convention. 1. Trafficking in persons. The Committee observes that section 42 of the Measures to Combat Terrorism and Transnational Organised Crime Act (TTOC Act), 2005, provides that anyone who engages in trafficking in persons is liable to imprisonment for 15 years. According to section 2 of the same Act, “trafficking in persons” means the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a person for the purpose of exploitation. “Exploitation” includes all forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, and servitude. The Committee requests the Government to provide information concerning the phenomenon of trafficking in persons for the purposes of both labour and sexual exploitation in the country, as well as on the measures taken to prevent it and protect potential victims.The Committee alsorequests the Government to provide information on any investigation or criminal proceeding conducted under section 42 of the TTOC Act, 2005, for the crime of trafficking in persons.

2. Legislation concerning vagrancy. The Committee observes that, in accordance with section 167(a) of the Penal Code, “any person who, having no visible means of support or insufficient lawful means, shall not (being thereunto required by any magistrates’ court or who, being duly summoned for such purpose, shall be brought before any magistrates’ court) give good account of his means of support to the satisfaction of such magistrates’ court” shall be deemed idle and disorderly and be liable to imprisonment for two months or to a fine. Under section 168(a), any person convicted under section 167 after having previously been convicted as an idle and disorderly person is guilty of a misdemeanor, liable for the first offence to imprisonment for three months, and for every subsequent offence to imprisonment for one year. The Committee observes that the remaining paragraphs of sections 167 and 168 of the Penal Code refer, in the definitions of idle and disorderly persons and rogues and vagabonds, to conducts that are likely to disturb the public order such as drunkenness, begging and riotous behavior.

The Committee draws the Government’s attention to the fact that laws which oblige all able-bodied citizens to be gainfully employed (such as is requested under section 167(a) of the Penal Code) under the menace of imposition of penal sanctions are incompatible with the Convention as they constitute an indirect compulsion to work. It also recalls that the laws, which define vagrancy in such general terms that they may serve directly or indirectly as a means of forcing persons to work, should be amended so that penal sanctions are limited to the cases where the public order is disturbed by an offender who refrains from working, but who is also engaged in any unlawful activity as a means of subsistence. As recourse to section 167(a) of the Penal Code may constitute an indirect constraint to work, the Committee therefore requests the Government to take measures to repeal this paragraph so that only persons who disturb the public order, such as in the remaining paragraphs of sections 167 and 168, may be liable to penal sanctions.