The purpose of this article is to clarify significant changes concerning the issue of human trafficking in the JCHR 2005-06 debates in the UK. It  contributes to contemporary discourses on human trafficking which concentrate not only on trafficking of women and children but also human trafficking as a human rights abuse.
 In October 2005, the JCHR determined that it would hold a series of debates on human trafficking. The aim of these debates was to discuss and  recommend whether or not the Government should sign and ratify the European Convention of 2005. As the European Convention has been established  to ensure the human rights of all trafficked persons regardless of age or sex, the JCHR 2005-06 was the first opportunity in the UK to discuss human  trafficking as a human rights issue.
 However, two divergent discourses on human trafficking separated the debates in the JCHR: the discourses on protecting human rights of trafficked  persons and those by abolitionist feminists. On the one hand, the former represented by the ECPAT UK Coalition, Kalayaan and TUC insisted that it was  necessary for the Government to protect trafficked persons' rights because the immigration policies had a harmful influence on them. In particular, 
the ECPAT Coalition stressed that the Government should lift the reservation of the UN CRC in order to protect trafficked children's rights. On the  other hand, abolitionist feminists represented by the Glasgow City Council and the Home Office, relied on the arguments from the Eaves Poppy Project  and Chaste UK. Based on the empirical co-operation between those abolitionist feminists' groups and the Home Office, they focused on a demand  reduction based approach to combat against trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation. While the participants admitted that the  Government needed the European Convention as an international standard of protecting human rights of trafficked persons, the two discourses split the  debates on how to support the trafficked persons.
 Summing up all the arguments by the participants, the JCHR tried to reach consensus on Article 13 and 14, while it also compromised to reconsider the  arguments of children's charities and abolitionist feminists. As a result, the JCHR concluded that the Government should ratify the European Convention,   but also reviewed removals of the reservation of the UN CRC and abolition of demand in the sex industry.