One hundred years of the definition.
A century ago today the Slavery Convention was signed at Geneva. For the first time a treaty said what slavery is: a status, the exercise of the powers of ownership over a person. The United States bound itself to that sentence in 1929 and again in 1967. It has never been withdrawn, never narrowed, and never applied by an American court to the people the Thirteenth Amendment's exception leaves exposed. That is the work.
"Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised."
Slavery Convention, signed at Geneva, September 25, 1926, 60 L.N.T.S. 253, 46 Stat. 2183. United States adherence March 21, 1929.
Adoption, entry into force, adherence, and accession are four different things.
The centennial is of the signing. The other dates are often run together; here they are separated, each one checked against the United Nations treaty record.
The Slavery Convention is signed at Geneva under the League of Nations. Article 1(1) defines slavery for the first time in a treaty: the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised. Source text
The Convention enters into force. Source text
The United States adheres. From this date the definition binds the United States under international law. Source text
The Protocol amending the Convention is adopted at New York, transferring the League's functions to the United Nations. The amended Convention enters into force July 7, 1955; the United States signs it definitively March 7, 1956. Source text
The Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery is adopted at Geneva. Article 7(a) restates the 1926 definition. It enters into force April 30, 1957. Source text
The United States accedes to the Supplementary Convention. Source text
The Bellagio-Harvard Guidelines on the Legal Parameters of Slavery explain the powers the definition names: possession, use, management, profit, transfer, disposal. A scholarly gloss on the treaty, not a treaty. Network position
Colorado puts the first ballot question to remove a state's punishment exception in 2016. Eight states remove theirs between 2018 and 2024. Source text
The network applies the definition, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, through the Constitutional Abolition Enforcement Standards, and carries it into hearing rooms, a petition, a United Nations submission, and a federal amendment. Network position
Sources: United Nations Treaty Collection, chapter XVIII, treaties 2 and 4; United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law, the Slavery Convention; the network's authorities library. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights marks the centenary with its own initiative; the network is not a party to it.
Not a commemoration. A measuring rod.
The definition was written for a world of slave markets and forced marches, and it was written without naming an owner. It asks one question of any regime that holds people: are the powers of ownership exercised over them? A hundred years later that question has a court-validated set of indicators, a set of instruments that score it against a jurisdiction's own rules, and a field of state campaigns that removed the words from eight constitutions without yet answering it.
The network's position is that the punishment exception in the Thirteenth Amendment suspended the protection against this status for convicted people and that the status has since been administered as a claim of ownership the definition already forbids. The treaty is the authority. The guidelines interpret it. The audits measure it. The record on this site is where anyone can check the work.