The Committee of Ministers mandated the European Committee of Crime Problems (CDPC) to elaborate a criminal law convention against trafficking in human organs and, if appropriate, an additional protocol to that convention against trafficking in human tissues and cells.

The Committee of Experts on Trafficking in Human Organs, Tissues and Cells (PC-TO) met four times and drafted the Council of Europe Convention against Trafficking in Human Organs (CETS No. 216), opened for signature on 25 March 2015 and entered into force on 1st of March 2018.

In 2009, a joint Council of Europe/United Nations Study on trafficking in organs, tissues and cells and trafficking in human beings for the purpose of the removal of organs was drafted. This study identified a gap in the coverage provided by the Palermo Protocol, which addressed organ trafficking only in the wider context of trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal.

Trafficking in human organs has attained global proportions and represents a violation of basic human rights as well as a direct threat to individual and public health. As such, under the authority of the European Committee on Crime Problems (CDPC), and taking into account a series of legally binding instruments (the Council of Europe Convention of Human Rights and Biomedicine and its Additional Protocol concerning Transplantation of Organs and Tissues of Human Origin, the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings), the WHO Guiding Principles on Human Cell, Tissue and Organ Transplantation, the above-mentioned joint Council of Europe/United Nations Study as well as the additional opinion of three Council of Europe steering committees dealing with this topic (Steering Committee on Bioethics (CDBI), the European Committee on Crime Problems (CDPC) and the European Committee on Transplantation of Organs (CD-P-TO)), the Council of Europe Convention against the Trafficking in Human Organs was established to combat and specifically criminalise the trafficking in organs.