Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 1999, published 88th ILC session (2000)

Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29) - Estonia (Ratification: 1996)
Protocol of 2014 to the Forced Labour Convention, 1930 - Estonia (Ratification: 2016)

The Committee notes with interest the information provided by the Government in its first report on the application of the Convention. It would be grateful if the Government would supply, in its next report, additional information on the following points.

Articles 1, paragraph 1, and 2, paragraph 1, of the Convention. The Committee notes the provisions of the Act on Service in the Defence Forces, 1994, concerning compulsory military service and alternative service. It would be grateful if the Government would provide, in its next report, copies of legislation governing military service on a contract basis, to which reference is made in section 43 of the Act. In particular, please indicate any provisions applicable to professional military officers and other career servicemen as regards their right to leave the service, in time of peace, at their own request, either at fixed intervals or by means of notice of reasonable length.

Article 2, paragraph 2(c). The Committee notes the provisions on compulsory prison labour in the Code of Executive Procedures (RT I, 1997, 43/44, 723), which do not seem to exclude that prisoners be hired to or placed at the disposal of private individuals, companies or associations, as provided for in Article 2, paragraph 2(c), of the Convention. As the Committee recalled in paragraphs 112 to 125 of its General Report to the 86th Session of the International Labour Conference (1998), it is only when work or service is performed in conditions approximating to a free employment relationship that work by prisoners for private companies can be held compatible with the explicit prohibition of the Convention; this necessarily requires the formal consent of the person concerned, as well as further guarantees and safeguards covering the essential elements of a free labour relationship, such as the payment of normal wages and social security, etc. In this connection the Committee draws the Government's attention also to the general observation on the Convention made in its report to the 87th Session of the ILC (1999). The Committee hopes that, in its next report, the Government will supply information on the various points raised in that general observation, indicating, inter alia, whether prisoners under the common system and under the "open" and "half-closed" schemes (sections 143 and 148 of the Code of Executive Procedures) may work in workshops run by private enterprises inside or outside the prisons, and, if so, on what terms and conditions. The Committee also notes the provisions of sections 19(3) and 23 of the Code of Administrative Offences and requests the Government to describe the procedure governing the imposition of "administrative arrest" assigned by an administrative judge and also to clarify the status in law of an administrative judge.

Article 2, paragraph 2(e). Please indicate whether minor communal services may be exacted, in the direct interest of the community, as normal civic obligations of its members, and, if so, supply copies of the legislation applicable.

Article 25. Please provide information on any legal proceedings which may have been instituted as a consequence of the illegal exaction of forced or compulsory labour and on any penalties imposed under section 124-3 of the Criminal Code. Please also supply a copy of the new Act on Punishments referred to in the Government's report as being in preparation, once it is adopted.