Strengthening and Promoting Effective Measures and International Cooperation on Organ Donation and Transplantation to Prevent and Combat Trafficking in Persons for the Purpose of Organ Removal and Trafficking in Human Organs

A/RES/71/322No PDF available

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 106Crime prevention and criminal justice, published in 2017.

What other versions does this mandate have?

5 versions · 2017–2024

This is an older version — the most recent is A/RES/79/189

2024A/RES/79/189Strengthening and promoting effective measures and international cooperation on organ donation and transplantation to prevent and combat trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal and trafficking in human organsLatestCompare with previous version
2023A/RES/77/236Strengthening and promoting effective measures and international cooperation on organ donation and transplantation to prevent and combat trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal and trafficking in human organsCompare with previous version
2020A/RES/75/195Strengthening and promoting effective measures and international cooperation on organ donation and transplantation to prevent and combat trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal and trafficking in human organsCompare with previous version
2019A/RES/73/189Strengthening and promoting effective measures and international cooperation on organ donation and transplantation to prevent and combat trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal and trafficking in human organsCompare with previous version
2017A/RES/71/322Strengthening and promoting effective measures and international cooperation on organ donation and transplantation to prevent and combat trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal and trafficking in human organs

Versions are identified automatically by matching titles within the same organ (~97% accuracy on a manual audit).

What subjects does this mandate have?

4 topics

Crime Prevention Illicit Traffic International Cooperation Organ Transplantation

What does this mandate say?

27 operative paragraphs

Urges Member States to prevent and combat trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal and trafficking in human organs, in accordance with their obligations under international and national law, and to uphold accountability through measures that may include preventing and, in accordance with relevant national legislation, investigating, prosecuting and punishing the unauthorized removal or implantation of organs and the illicit sale, brokering and purchase and other illicit transactions in respect of human organs, as well as trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal;

Urges Member States that have not yet done so to ratify or accede to, as a matter of priority, the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime5 and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime,6 taking into consideration the central role of those instruments in the fight against trafficking in persons, and urges States parties to those instruments to implement them fully and effectively;

Urges Member States to consider adopting the following measures related to organ transplantation, in accordance with the fundamental principles of their domestic legal systems and national legislations and in line with the World Health Organization guiding principles on human cell, tissue and organ transplantation:

Strengthening legislative frameworks, including by reviewing, developing or amending them, as appropriate, to prevent and combat trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal and trafficking in human organs, which may include prosecution for illicit sale, brokering and purchase and other illicit transactions in respect of human organs;

Adopting appropriate legislative measures necessary to guarantee that the donation of organs is guided by clinical criteria and ethical norms, based on the donors’ informed and voluntary consent, as an altruistic act, performed without any monetary payment or other reward of monetary value, which does not preclude reimbursing reasonable and verifiable expenses incurred by donors;

Ensuring equitable access to human organ transplantation, on the basis of non-discrimination, and increasing public awareness and understanding of the benefits resulting from the voluntary non-remunerated provision of organs from deceased and living donors, and of the physical, psychological and social risks to individuals and communities caused by trafficking in human organs and transplant tourism;

Ensuring that the removal of human organs from both deceased and living persons, as well as the transplantation of human organs, exclusively take place in centres specifically authorized by the relevant national health authorities and are not performed outside the framework of domestic transplantation systems or in situations where the transplantation is performed in breach of the guiding principles or national transplantation laws or rules;

Developing and strengthening regulatory oversight of the medical facilities and medical professionals involved in the transplantation of human organs, including through control measures, such as periodic audits;

Setting specific processes and criteria for the authorization of every organ removal and transplantation procedure;

Developing registries, with due regard to professional confidentiality and personal data protection in respect of both donors and recipients, that include information regarding each organ recovery and transplantation procedure and follow-up with living donors and recipients of organs, with the purpose of ensuring the transparency of practices, traceability and the quality and safety of human organs;

Promoting the voluntary contribution of periodic information to international registers for organ donation and transplantation activity, such as the Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation developed in collaboration with the World Health Organization;

Providing long-term medical and psychosocial care for both living donors and recipients;

Encourages Member States to exchange experience in and information on preventing, combating and punishing the illicit removal of and trafficking in human organs and trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal, as well as on the protection of victims, as appropriate;

Also encourages Member States to progress towards self-sufficiency in the transplantation of human organs by developing strategies aimed at decreasing the incidence of diseases treatable through transplantation, and at ethically increasing the availability of human organs for transplantation purposes, with special attention to maximizing donations from deceased donors and to protecting the health and welfare of living donors;

Further encourages Member States to develop effective organ donation and transplantation systems and provide technical assistance for their implementation in requesting countries;

Encourages Member States to provide training and capacity-building for law enforcement and border control officials, as well as for medical, health and care centre professionals, on identifying potential cases, including on the Internet, of trafficking in human organs and trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal and on the need to certify the origin of organs to be transplanted and to report suspected or confirmed illegal practices;

Also encourages Member States to strengthen international cooperation in responding to the crimes of trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal and trafficking in human organs, as provided for in relevant and applicable law, including domestic and international law;

Urges Member States to further develop, in their domestic legislation, ways of protecting victims of trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal and, as appropriate, ways of addressing the vulnerability of those individuals who sell their organs, including by considering the following measures:

Adopting all necessary measures, including legal measures, to protect the rights and interests of victims in the course of all phases of criminal prosecution and judicial proceedings;

Facilitating the access of victims of trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal and, as appropriate, of those individuals who sell their organs to appropriate information related to their case, as well as to the necessary protection of their health and other rights that are at stake, including their right to anonymity;

Providing medical and psychosocial care to victims in the short, medium and long term;

Ensuring that domestic legal systems contain measures that offer victims the possibility of obtaining effective compensation for the damage suffered;

Promoting the creation of governmental mechanisms and providing support to specialized non-governmental organizations, as appropriate, to address the needs of groups at risk of trafficking in human organs and trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal, in order to facilitate the provision of holistic and early care to potential or actual victims of those crimes, and ensuring that all support measures are non-discriminatory, gender-, age- and culturally sensitive and comply with their international human rights obligations and national legislation;

Requests the World Health Organization, in collaboration with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, among other relevant bodies, to develop international guidelines on the health, criminal and human rights aspects relating to trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal and trafficking in human organs;

Requests the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to engage in a dialogue with members of the Inter-Agency Coordination Group against Trafficking in Persons and other relevant intergovernmental international organizations, in particular the World Health Organization, in close consultation with Member States, so as to enable the Office to improve data collection and analysis on instances of trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal and relevant prosecutions, and to promote research among diverse fields, such as the medical and health management fields, as well as on the part of the anti-trafficking community, while bearing in mind that data on trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal are being gathered for the Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, in accordance with the provisions set out in General Assembly resolution 70/179;

Also requests the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in collaboration with other entities of the United Nations system, including the World Health Organization, to continue providing capacity-building and technical assistance to States, upon request, to assist them in strengthening national capacities to effectively prevent and combat trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal and trafficking in human organs;

Invites Member States and other donors to provide extrabudgetary resources to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for the purposes of implementing the present resolution, and to the World Health Organization for the drawing up of international guidelines on the health ramifications of the crimes of trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal and trafficking in human organs, on the basis of the World Health Organization guiding principles on human cell, tissue and organ transplantation and in accordance with the rules and procedures of the United Nations, for submission to the General Assembly for consideration at its seventy-third session.

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