Professor Carlos Espaliú, the Director of the Charlemagne Institute, was a member of the scientific committee at the International Legal Conference on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, which took place in Granada from Wednesday to Friday, 2-4 April 2014. A group of students from the UIC's Faculty of Law also took an active part in the event.
The speakers at the conference included specialists from all over the world, such as Gulnara Shahinian, the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery; Professor Jean Allain from Queen’s University Belfast; and Aidan McQuade, the Director of Anti-Slavery International. The speakers helped create a forum where slavery, one of the most serious social problems facing the world today, could be discussed and analysed.
Over the course of the event it became clear that modern slavery manifests itself chiefly in the trafficking of human beings, the exploitation of workers (through forced labour) and the sexual exploitation of victims (forced prostitution), to the extent that it has become one of the world’s leading criminal activities. The speakers also made it clear that we are dealing with a multifaceted phenomenon linked to economic globalization, international migration and the conditions of extreme insecurity and poverty in which many people live, particularly women and children.
Faculty of Law students Cristina Olesti, Josep Maria Villagrasa, David Vilanova, Alejandro Arraut and Fernando Elguea attended the event and made notable contributions. In total, the Conference was attended by over 500 people, taking into account those who attended in person and those who followed the online proceedings.
