An Empirical Analysis of State Compliance to Anti-Human Trafficking Response

Human trafficking is considered one of the most heinous crimes on a transnational scale, and one that also brings the highest profit. To combat human trafficking, the United Nations adopted the anti-trafficking protocol, with most UN member states ratifying the content. How ever, actual compliance with the international anti-trafficking protocol is not prioritized in terms of incorporating the protocol in national law or addressing it in the national political agenda. The compliance with human-rights law is affected by domestic and international factors. This paper aims to answer the question of whether the domestic factor of the remittance dependency generated from migrants of the international factor of humanitarian assistance from the United States affects each state’s compliance with the international anti-trafficking protocol. I empirically test this hypothesis by using an ordered-probit model with panel data from 107 countries during the period 2000-2015. The results suggest that, taking the limitations of quantitative research design into account, the humanitarian assistance from the United States has a major impact on a state’s compliance with the international anti-trafficking protocol, whereas the remittance dependency appears to have little to no impact on compliance with the international anti-trafficking protocol.