EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS

415
26.7.2005

Press release issued by the Registrar

CHAMBER JUDGMENT
SILIADIN v. FRANCE

The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing a judgment1 in the case of
Siliadin v. France (application no. 73316/01). The Court held unanimously that there had
been a violation of Article 4 (prohibition of servitude) of the European Convention on
Human Rights.

Under Article 41 (just satisfaction) of the Convention, the Court awarded the applicant
26,209.69 euros (EUR) for costs and expenses. As Ms Siliadin had made no claim for
compensation in respect of damage sustained, the Court made no award. (The judgment is
available only in French.)

1. Principal facts

The applicant, Siwa-Akofa Siliadin, is a Togolese national who was born in 1978 and lives in
Paris.

In January 1994 the applicant, who was then fifteen and a half years old, arrived in France
with a French national of Togolese origin, Mrs D. The latter had undertaken to regularise the
girl’s immigration status and to arrange for her education, while the applicant was to do
housework for Mrs D. until she had earned enough to pay her back for her air ticket. The
applicant effectively became an unpaid servant to Mr and Mrs D. and her passport was
confiscated.

In around October 1994 Mrs D. “lent” the applicant to a couple of friends, Mr and Mrs B., to
help them with household chores and to look after their young children. She was supposed to
stay for only a few days until Mrs B. gave birth. However, after her child was born, Mrs B.
decided to keep the applicant on. She became a “maid of all work” to the couple, who made
her work from 7.30 a.m. until 10.30 p.m. every day with no days off, giving her special
permission to go to mass on certain Sundays. The applicant slept in the children’s bedroom
on a mattress on the floor and wore old clothes. She was never paid, but received one or two
500-franc notes, the equivalent of 76.22 EUR, from Mrs B.’s mother.

1 Under Article 43 of the European Convention on Human Rights, within three months from the date of a

Chamber judgment, any party to the case may, in exceptional cases, request that the case be referred to the
17-member Grand Chamber of the Court. In that event, a panel of five judges considers whether the case raises a
serious question affecting the interpretation or application of the Convention or its protocols, or a serious issue
of general importance, in which case the Grand Chamber will deliver a final judgment. If no such question or
issue arises, the panel will reject the request, at which point the judgment becomes final. Otherwise Chamber
judgments become final on the expiry of the three-month period or earlier if the parties declare that they do not
intend to make a request to refer.
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In July 1998 Ms Siliadin confided in a neighbour, who informed the Committee against
Modern Slavery, which reported the matter to the prosecuting authorities. Criminal
proceedings were brought against Mr and Mrs B. for wrongfully obtaining unpaid or
insufficiently paid services from a vulnerable or dependent person, an offence under
Article 225-13 of the Criminal Code, and for subjecting that person to working or living
conditions incompatible with human dignity, an offence under Article 225-14 of the Code.

The defendants were convicted at first instance and sentenced to, among other penalties, 12
months’ imprisonment (seven of which were suspended), but were acquitted on appeal on 19
October 2000. In a judgment of 15 May 2003 Versailles Court of Appeal, to which the case
had subsequently been referred by the Court of Cassation, found Mr and Mrs B. guilty of
making the applicant, a vulnerable and dependent person, work unpaid for them but
considered that her working and living conditions were not incompatible with human dignity.
It accordingly ordered them to pay the applicant the equivalent of EUR 15,245 in damages.

In October 2003 an employment tribunal awarded the applicant a sum that included
EUR 31,238 in salary arrears.

2. Procedure and composition of the Court

The application was lodged on 17 April 2001 and declared partly admissible on 1 February
2005. A hearing took place in public in the Human Rights Building, Strasbourg, on 3 May
2005.

Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:

Ireneu Cabral Barreto (Portuguese), President,

Jean-Paul Costa (French),
Riza Türmen (Turkish),
Karel Jungwiert (Czech),
Volodymyr Butkevych (Ukrainian),
Antonella Mularoni (San Marinese),
Elisabet Fura-Sandström (Swedish), judges,

and also Stanley Naismith, Deputy Section Registrar.

3. Summary of the judgment1

Complaint

Relying on Article 4 (prohibition of forced labour) of the European Convention on Human

Rights, the applicant submitted that French criminal law did not afford her sufficient and
effective protection against the “servitude” in which she had been held, or at the very least
against the “forced and compulsory” labour she had been required to perform, which in
practice had made her a domestic slave.

1 This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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Decision of the Court

As to the applicability of Article 4 and the positive obligations arising from it

The Court considered that Article 4 of the Convention enshrined one of the fundamental
values of the democratic societies which make up the Council of Europe. It was one of those
Convention provisions with regard to which the fact that a State had refrained from infringing
the guaranteed rights did not suffice to conclude that it had complied with its obligations; it
gave rise to positive obligations on States, consisting in the adoption and effective
implementation of criminal-law provisions making the practices set out in Article 4 a
punishable offence.

As to the violation of Article 4

The Court noted that, in addition to the Convention, numerous international treaties had as
their aim the protection of human beings from slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory
labour. As the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe had pointed out, although
slavery was officially abolished more than 150 years ago, “domestic slavery” persisted in
Europe and concerned thousands of people, the majority of whom were women. In
accordance with modern standards and trends in that area, the Court considered that States
were under an obligation to penalise and punish any act aimed at maintaining a person in a
situation incompatible with Article 4.

In order to classify the state in which the applicant was held, the Court noted that Ms Siliadin
had worked for years for Mr and Mrs B., without respite, against her will, and without being
paid. The applicant, who was a minor at the relevant time, was unlawfully present in a
foreign country and was afraid of being arrested by the police. Indeed, Mr and Mrs B.
maintained that fear and led her to believe that her status would be regularised.

In those circumstances, the Court considered that Ms Siliadin had, at the least, been subjected
to forced labour within the meaning of Article 4 of the Convention.

The Court had then to determine whether the applicant had also been held in slavery or
servitude.

With regard to slavery, although the applicant had been deprived of her personal autonomy,
the evidence did not suggest that she had been held in slavery in the proper sense, in other
words that Mr and Mrs B. had exercised a genuine right of ownership over her, thus reducing
her to the status of an object. Accordingly, the Court held that it could not be considered that
Ms Siliadin had been held in slavery in the traditional sense of that concept.

As to servitude, that was to be regarded as an obligation to provide one’s services under

coercion, and was to be linked to the concept of “slavery”. In that regard, the Court noted that
the forced labour imposed on the applicant lasted almost 15 hours a day, seven days a week.
Brought to France by a relative of her father’s, Ms Siliadin had not chosen to work for Mr
and Mrs B. As a minor, she had no resources and was vulnerable and isolated, and had no
means of subsistence other than in the home of Mr and Mrs B., where she shared the
children’s bedroom.
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The applicant was entirely at Mr and Mrs B.’s mercy, since her papers had been confiscated
and she had been promised that her immigration status would be regularised, which had never
occurred. Nor did Ms Siliadin, who was afraid of being arrested by the police, have any
freedom of movement or free time. In addition, as she had not been sent to school, despite the
promises made to her father, the applicant could not hope that her situation would improve
and was completely dependent on Mr and Mrs B.

In those circumstances, the Court considered that Ms Siliadin, a minor at the relevant time,
had been held in servitude within the meaning of Article 4.

Accordingly, it fell to the Court to determine whether French legislation had afforded the
applicant sufficient protection in the light of the positive obligations incumbent on France
under Article 4. In that connection, it noted that the Parliamentary Assembly had regretted in
its Recommendation 1523(2001) that “none of the Council of Europe member states
expressly [made] domestic slavery an offence in their criminal codes”. Slavery and servitude
were not as such classified as criminal offences in the French criminal-law legislation.

Mr and Mrs B., who were prosecuted under Articles 225-13 and 225-14 of the Criminal
Code, were not convicted under criminal law. In that connection, the Court noted that, as the
Principal Public Prosecutor had not appealed on points of law against the Court of Appeal’s
judgment of 19 October 2000, an appeal to the Court of Cassation was made only in respect
of the civil aspect of the case and Mr and Mrs B.’s acquittal thus became final. In addition,
according to a report drawn up in 2001 by the French National Assembly’s joint committee
on the various forms of modern slavery, those provisions of the Criminal Code were open to
very differing interpretation from one court to the next.

In those circumstances, the Court considered that the criminal-law legislation in force at the
material time had not afforded the applicant specific and effective protection against the
actions of which she had been a victim. It emphasised that the increasingly high standard
being required in the area of the protection of human rights and fundamental liberties
correspondingly and inevitably required greater firmness in assessing breaches of the
fundamental values of democratic societies.

Consequently, the Court concluded that France had not fulfilled its positive obligations under
Article 4.

***

The Court’s judgments are accessible on its Internet site (http://www.echr.coe.int).

Registry of the European Court of Human Rights

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Press contacts: Roderick Liddell (telephone: +00 33 (0)3 88 41 24 92)
Emma Hellyer (telephone: +00 33 (0)3 90 21 42 15)
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Fax: +00 33 (0)3 88 41 27 91

The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe
Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on
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Human Rights. Since 1 November 1998 it has sat as a full-time Court composed of an equal
number of judges to that of the States party to the Convention. The Court examines the
admissibility and merits of applications submitted to it. It sits in Chambers of 7 judges or, in
exceptional cases, as a Grand Chamber of 17 judges. The Committee of Ministers of the
Council of Europe supervises the execution of the Court’s judgments. More detailed
information about the Court and its activities can be found on its Internet site.