The Global Governance of Trafficking in Persons: Toward a Transnational Regime Complex

ABSTRACT

Twenty years ago, international cooperation against trafficking in persons was close to nonexistent. This changed suddenly and irreversibly in 2000, with the signing of the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons (TIP), especially Women and Children. Since then, regional and bilateral cooperation initiatives on TIP have proliferated. In addition to these interstate agreements, recent years have witnessed the emergence and spread of novel forms of soft or voluntary rule making, developed by intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and private actors. As a result, the governance of TIP has evolved from a state-centric regime to a transnational regime complex, in which public and private actors share responsibilities over various global governance tasks, including information sharing, standard setting, and monitoring and evaluation. In seeking to map out and shed light on the different components of this transnational regime complex, the article proposes a typology of transnational governance initiatives and illustrates its usefulness with an original dataset of 58 private, and public–private schemes involved in various aspects of the governance of TIP. The article then considers the implications of this increasing institutional complexity for international efforts to stop human trafficking. I argue that despite these remarkable institutional transformations and the growing role of private actors, the implementation of TIP rules and norms remains uneven and driven by state interests. Notwithstanding the increasing participation of nonstate actors and IGOs in the governance of TIP, states’ security concerns and their reluctance to cooperate on migration issues continue to drive anti-trafficking policies worldwide.

KEYWORDS:

• Global governance
• human trafficking
• international cooperation
• international organizations
• regimes

Notes

¹ Foot, Toft, and Cesare (2015) document the increasing role of private actors, including nongovernmental organizations, businesses, universities, professional associations, labor unions, and religious organizations, in anti-TIP efforts.

² See, for example, Chuang (2006), Bravo (2009), and Chacón (2010).

³ On the intense controversies and negotiations surrounding the wording of the definition of TIP, and in particular, the issue of voluntary prostitution and its relation to trafficking, see Gallagher (2010).

⁴ European Union, 2002.

⁵ European Union, 2011.

⁶ See Council of Europe, 2005.

⁷ ECOWAS, 2002.

⁸ SAARC, 2002.

⁹ ASEAN, 2004.

¹⁰ COMMIT, 2004.

¹¹ ASEAN, 2016.

¹² OAS, 2003.

¹³ OAS, 2005.

¹⁴ It should be noted, however, that there is significant disagreement among scholars, practitioners, and policy makers as to the relationship between TIP for organ removal and organ trafficking. See Kelly (2013) for an in-depth discussion.

¹⁵ The handbook was most recently revised in 2015.

¹⁶ These include ILO, IOM, UNICEF, United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women (UNDAW), UNHCR, and UNODC.

¹⁷ Indeed, membership in the UN.GIFT’s “steering committee” almost entirely overlaps with ICAT: ILO, UNICEF, UNODC, UNOHCHR, plus IOM and OSCE.

¹⁸ See https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2011/November/unodc-and-unhcr-sign-mou-to-combat-human-trafficking-and-migrant-smuggling.html.

¹⁹ See http://betterwork.org.

²⁰ See http://www.osce.org/eea/41835?download=true.

²¹ See http://www.ungift.org/docs/ungift/pdf/Athens_principles.pdf.

²² See http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@ed_norm/@declaration/documents/publication/wcms_320405.pdf.

²³ See http://moscow.iom.int/documents/IRIS_BROCHURE_ENG.pdf.

²⁴ See http://multivu.prnewswire.com/mnr/transplantationsociety/33914/docs/33914-Declaration_of_Istanbul-Lancet.pdf.

²⁵ See http://www.eiccoalition.org/media/docs/EICCCodeofConduct5_1_English.pdf.

²⁶ See http://www.weceurope.org/fileadmin/templates/eurociett/docs/WEC_Europe_Code_of_Conduct.pdf and http://www.wecglobal.org/fileadmin/templates/ciett/docs/Presentation_of_CIETT_profile_structure.pdf.

²⁷ See http://www.staff-wanted.org/see-formula/.

²⁸ See https://icoca.ch/en/the_icoc.

²⁹ See http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/t7/.

³⁰ See http://humantraffickingcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/CodeofConduct2.pdf.

³¹ See http://www.iccr.org/sites/default/files/2013iccr_htprinciplesfinal112013.pdf.

³² See http://enpates.org/resources.

³³ See https://www.knowthechain.org/about-us/.

³⁴ See http://www.e-notes-observatory.org/project/.

³⁵ I exclude corporate codes of conduct specific to an individual company as well as national- and subnational-level initiatives even when some of these may address actors from more than one country.

³⁶ See http://www.standardsmap.org.

³⁷ While the latter include TIP for organ removal under their scope, these instruments “leave gaps because sometimes the three components of this problem (action, means, purpose) are difficult to prove” (Lopez-Fraga et al., 2014, p. 2187).