In a joint report issued Tuesday the United Nations and the Council of Europe declared a new international pact is needed to ban trafficking in human organs, tissues and cells, with the object of protecting victims and punishing offenders.

This announcement came almost 6 weeks after Chinese Minister of Health Huang Jiefu announced the launch of an organ donation system to, “eliminate illegal organ trading and encourage people to become donors.”

According to the United Nations’ World Health Organization, 90 percent of the organs transplanted in China each year come from executed prisoners, and the process of organ extraction from executed prisoners has become even easier in recent years with the utilization of lethal injections and mobile execution vans.

The report suggested the implementation of “an international legal instrument,” to define trafficking and to hold perpetrators accountable for their crimes.  Such a suggestion is long overdue given the millions of dollars a year which change hands in this worldwide black market industry.  Despite the lack of domestic controls in nations which allow the individual to sell their own organs for individual profit, China is unique in that the state is a direct beneficiary from black market entrepreneurship.  Although the report did not further discuss the implementation of such a legal mechanism, we hope that the United Nations stands up to condemn such violations of basic human rights.