Determinants of Victim-Centered Approaches to Human Trafficking: A Cross-National Comparison

The United Nations Palermo Protocol adopted in 2000 is the most important regime to combat human trafficking. It imposes a comprehensive set of measures to prevent the occurrence of trafficking, to prosecute and punish traffickers, and to protect victims of trafficking upon ratifying states. Comparative research on compliance to the Trafficking Protocol is largely based on international relation theories. The idea that policy output might also be the result of the interplay of forces of different internal political actors and circumstances within a state has thereby been neglected. My paper tries to contribute to this gap by looking at the influence of the ratio of female members of parliament, the parliament’s average position towards disadvantaged populations, and political constraints for state-compliance to victim protection as proposed in the Trafficking Protocol. I will run time-series-cross-section analysis with a sample of 35 EU and OECD countries during 2000 – 2010.