Harvesting vulnerability: The challenges of organ trafficking in armed conflict

Abstract

Armed conflicts leave populations vulnerable to organ trafficking, a criminal enterprise with little international regulation when viewed separately from human trafficking. The Council of Europe's Convention against Trafficking in Human Organs is the only instrument to contemplate the responsibility of actors involved in organ trafficking, but traffickers may go unpunished due to its limited scope. Yet in armed conflict, international humanitarian law offers additional protection. The rules protecting the living and the dead against ill-treatment provide the basic level of protection necessary to consider the international responsibility of organ trafficking networks and the individual criminal responsibility of their members.