Article 3
The High Contracting Parties undertake to adopt all appropriate measures with a view to
preventing and suppressing the embarkation, disembarkation and transport of slaves in
their territorial waters and upon all vessels flying their respective flags.
The High Contracting Parties undertake to negotiate as soon as possible a general
Convention with regard to the slave trade which will give them rights and impose upon
them duties of the same nature as those provided for in the Convention of June 17th,
1925, relative to the International Trade in Arms (Articles 12, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and
paragraphs 3, 4 and 5 of Section II of Annex II), with the necessary adaptations, it being
understood that this general Convention will not place the ships (even of small tonnage)
of any High Contracting Parties in a position different from that of the other High
Contracting Parties.
It is also understood that, before or after the coming into force of this general
Convention, the High Contracting Parties are entirely free to conclude between
themselves, without, however, derogating from the principles laid down in the preceding
paragraph, such special agreements as, by reason of their peculiar situation, might appear
to be suitable in order to bring about as soon as possible the complete disappearance of
the slave trade.
Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade,
and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery
1956
Article 1
Each of the States Parties to this Convention shall take all practicable and necessary
legislative and other measures to bring about progressively and as soon as possible the
complete abolition or abandonment of the following institutions and practices, where
they still exist and whether or not they are covered by the definition of slavery contained
in article 1 of the Slavery
Convention signed at Geneva on 25 September 1926:
(a) Debt bondage, that is to say, the status or condition arising from a pledge by a debtor
of his personal services or of those of a person under his control as security for a debt, if
the value of those services as reasonably assessed is not applied towards the liquidation
of the debt or the length and nature of those services are not respectively limited and
defined;
(b) Serfdom, that is to say, the condition or status of a tenant who is by law, custom or
agreement bound to live and labour on land belonging to another person and to render
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