Determinants of Compliance with Protectionist Policies for Human Trafficking Victims

The international community has joined together in an effort to combat human trafficking. Utilizing the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, commonly known as the Palermo Protocols, the focus of combatant efforts has been tailored to fit three categories: prosecution, prevention, and protection. Because the attention of several countries appears to be primarily devoted to prosecution, protection often falls victim to indifference, leaving victims without the care that they need to readjust to daily life. While the three components are supposedly equal in weight, this inequality is apparent in several countries through their anti-trafficking efforts. In this paper, I examine why some states offer greater levels of commitment to the protection component of the Palermo Protocols on human trafficking than others by examining a possible interactive effect between domestic and international factors. While the interaction was not found to be statistically significant, international factors measured by a state’s level of international involvement as well as the domestic factor considering the presence of strict immigration policies provide a greater understanding of the topic as a whole and guidance for future research endeavors