A/HRC/9/20 page 2 Summary At its sixth session, the Human Rights Council adopted resolution 6/14 of 28 September 2007 and appointed, for a three-year period, a Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences. This is a new mandate, replacing the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery. Pursuant to resolution 6/14, on 26 March 2008 Gulnara Shahinian was appointed Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences. Ms. Shahinian took up her mandate on 1 May 2008; this is her first report. Contemporary forms of slavery affect the lives of millions of people around the world. According to scholarly estimates, based on the definition of the Slavery Convention of 1926, there are 27 million enslaved people throughout the world.1 There is no country immune to its proliferation; of special concern is the situation of children, who are denied the fundamental right to be born free and to be protected from enslavement. The Special Rapporteur welcomes the decision of the Human Rights Council to establish a mandate on issues related to slavery, and notes that no other United Nations special procedures mandate provides an opportunity to apply a holistic approach to issues such as forced labour, which are related to slavery. The Special Rapporteur greatly values the consultations she held in Geneva with United Nations agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other important actors in the fight against contemporary forms of slavery. These consultations gave her a firm understanding of current debates and issues arising in this field of work. The consultations helped to develop the Special Rapporteur’s thematic direction for the next three years. In this regard, the Special Rappporteur will focus on the causes and consequences of forced labour and how it has an impact on men, women and children. She will take a particular focus on domestic labour and on child labour as it pertains to the economic exploitation of children. She will also strive to directly address the protection, prevention and the restoration of human rights and the dignity of victims of contemporary forms of slavery. 1 See Kevin Bales, Ending Slavery: how we free today’s slaves, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2007.