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/73/189No PDF available

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 109Crime prevention and criminal justice, published in 2019.

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?

5 topics

Crime Prevention Illicit Traffic International Cooperation Organ Transplantation Trafficking in Persons

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

1 report of the Secretary-General submitted under this mandate, 2020.

2020A/75/115Strengthening 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 report of the Secretary-General

Identified automatically from the metadata in each report’s UN Digital Library catalogue record.

What does this mandate say?

31 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 trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal and trafficking in human organs;

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 legislation 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, including the criminalization of these practices and provisions to ensure the accountability of the perpetrators;

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, for the living donor or the family of the deceased donor, or any other person or entity, 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 trafficking in persons for the purpose of the removal of organs, as well as 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 for such activities 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 recovery and 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;

Establishing and developing registries that include information regarding each organ recovery and transplantation procedure and outcomes for living donors and recipients of organs, as well as identification systems that facilitate tracing each organ from donor to recipient and vice versa, with the purpose of ensuring the transparency of practices and the quality and safety of human organs, with due regard to professional confidentiality and personal data protection;

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, international organizations and civil society to ensure sustained efforts in terms of information and awareness-raising activities aimed at fostering a positive attitude on the part of society regarding donation, including posthumous donation, as a gesture of altruism, solidarity and community participation, to warn of the risks of organ removal when performed in the context of trafficking, in particular among people in vulnerable situations at risk of becoming victims of this crime;

Encourages Member States to exchange experience in and information on preventing, prosecuting and punishing trafficking in human organs and trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal, to combat the illicit financial flows resulting from such trafficking, as well as on the protection of victims, as appropriate, and to strengthen international cooperation between all relevant actors;

Also encourages Member States to progress towards self-sufficiency in the transplantation of human organs by developing preventive 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 and properly resourced 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 health-care 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 and to ensure accountability;

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

Providing medical and psychosocial care to victims of trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal and individuals who sell their organs in the short, medium and long term;

Ensuring that domestic legal systems contain measures that offer victims of trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal and individuals who sell their organs 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;

Welcomes the establishment of the World Health Organization Task Force on Donation and Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues to advise and support the World Health Organization at all levels in disseminating and implementing guiding principles and capacity-building in order to ensure ethical practices in organ and tissue donation and transplantation worldwide;

Requests the World Health Organization, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to continue to provide guidelines to Member States for developing orderly, ethical and acceptable programmes for the acquisition and transplantation of human organs for therapeutic purposes, and to intensify the coordination of efforts in combating organ trafficking and trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal, including the development of additional transplantation registries;

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 of 17 December 2015;

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 purpose of implementing the present resolution and to the World Health Organization to disseminate and implement the principles endorsed by World Health Assembly to address the ethical aspects of organ transplantation, such as voluntary and unpaid donation, universal access to transplant services, the availability, safety and quality of the procedures and national accountability through the development of sustainable transplant systems and the achievement of national self-sufficiency in order to stop organ trafficking and trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal, as well as transplant tourism;

Requests the Secretary-General to submit a report on the implementation of the present resolution to the General Assembly at its seventy-fifth session, all costs associated with it to be covered by extrabudgetary resources;

Decides to continue its consideration of the question at its seventy-fifth session under the item entitled “Crime prevention and criminal justice”.

Paragraph content is machine-extracted from UN documents. For authoritative content, please refer to the official UN document.

No headings found in this document.

Who created this mandate?

What other versions does this mandate have?

What subjects does this mandate have?

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

What does this mandate say?

Table of contents