Australia
Practice Related to Rule 94. Slavery and Slave Trade
Under Australia’s War Crimes Act (1945), as amended in 2001, the deportation of a person to, or the internment of a person in, a death camp or a slave labour camp is a serious war crime.
Australia’s Criminal Code Act (1995), as amended to 2007, states with respect to serious war crimes that are committed in the course of an international armed conflict:
268.60 War crime – sexual slavery
(1) A person (the perpetrator) commits an offence if:
(a) the perpetrator causes another person to enter into or remain in sexual slavery; and
(b) the perpetrator intends to cause, or is reckless as to causing, that sexual slavery; and
(c) the perpetrator’s conduct takes place in the context of, and is associated with, an international armed conflict.
Penalty: Imprisonment for 25 years.
(2) For the purposes of this section, sexual slavery is the condition of a person who provides sexual services and who, because of the use of force or threats:
(a) is not free to cease providing sexual services; or
(b) is not free to leave the place or area where the person provides sexual services.
(3) In this section:
sexual service means the use or display of the body of the person providing the service for the sexual gratification of others.
threat means:
(a) a threat of force; or
(b) a threat to cause a person’s deportation; or
(c) a threat of any other detrimental action unless there are reasonable grounds for the threat of that action in connection with the provision of sexual services by a person.
Australia’s ICC (Consequential Amendments) Act (2002) incorporates in the Criminal Code the crimes defined in the 1998 ICC Statute: crimes against humanity, including “enslavement”, and war crimes, including “sexual slavery” and “enforced prostitution”, in both international and non-international armed conflicts.