Maren Perkins and Dr. Valerie Hudson, Department of Political Science
Sex trafficking is a growing problem worldwide. My research explores two questions: first, are states who sign the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (2000) more likely to comply with anti-sex trafficking norms than countries that do not? Second, if states do comply is it because of societal respect for women’s rights, or because of economic or membership incentives with anti-trafficking entities such as the United States and the European Union? The theory advanced by my research is that ratifying the Protocol, which is a pledge by the country to combat trafficking, will not by itself increase compliance with anti-trafficking norms; rather, a value for women’s rights will cause a country to comply. I also tested an alternative hypothesis, which is that compliance is based on dependency on anti-trafficking entities such as the US or EU. To test this, a time-lapsed qualitative analysis of ten Eastern European countries, five of whom ratified the Protocol early (defined as pre-2005) and five of whom ratified it late or never (2005 to the present), was performed.
The theory included four hypotheses to test whether women’s rights or dependency leads to better compliance: 1) the higher the political power of women within a country, the more likely that country is to comply with anti-sex trafficking provisions in the Protocol because then women are given a voice in policy formation; 2) the higher the social value of women in a country, the more likely that country is to comply because the society is invested in women’s futures; 3) the more legal protections women have in a country the more likely that country is to comply because it shows dedication to protecting women’s rights; and 4) the more dependent a country is on powerful anti-trafficking entities such as the US and the EU, the more likely that country is to comply because of trade, aid, and membership ties and the threat of punishment for noncompliance. The level of compliance with the anti-trafficking norms laid out in the Protocol is measured using the data in the annual US State Department Trafficking in Persons reports, coded on an original 1-6 (best to worst) scale.
The results of this study show that overall, value for women’s rights does not lead to better compliance with anti-trafficking norms. Instead both the qualitative tables and the case studies show that states are more likely to comply because they are dependent on anti-trafficking entities. In particular, a case study on Romania showed that the country’s anti-trafficking measures increased along with the EU’s scrutiny and insistence upon the subject as it bid for membership. Furthermore, this study shows that ratification itself does not lead to better compliance. In fact, the countries studied that had not ratified the Protocol had overall better compliance scores than those who had ratified early. Thus this study supports the theories that ratification itself does not cause states to comply with anti-trafficking legislation but that dependency on anti-trafficking entities does, but it also contradicts the theory that countries comply because they value women’s rights. These findings provide insight into whether or not international treaties are effective and what factors motivate states to address critical human rights problems such as sex trafficking.
After initially conducting the research on Eastern European countries for my Political Science capstone paper, I expanded it to examine other parts of the world in order to see how each region’s results compared to the others. The same tests were performed on groups of countries in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The results did not show as clear of a correlation with dependency on US aid and trade as the Eastern European countries, which was surprising to me. Latin America and the Middle East both showed that ratification did lead to better compliance, but Africa and Asia showed the opposite, like Eastern Europe. This shows that ratification needs to be examined on a case by case basis involving heterogeneous countries or regions to see if it by itself can be a predictor of increased compliance with anti-trafficking norms.
I included hypotheses testing the value of women in society because I was hoping to show that this was a factor in states’ compliance with anti-trafficking norms. I was disappointed, however, to find that these variables did not show positive correlation and that only dependency and economic factors did, because the oppression of women will not cease until the problems they face are tackled based on women’s intrinsic (not economic or other) value in their societies. The largest problem with this research was the availability of data. For example, I began my research using the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women but found it was not practical for a time-lapsed study because it was adopted in 1979, before sex trafficking became a prominent issue. For this reason I switched to the Protocol, which was opened for signature in 2000. However, the most important limitation to my data was the countries’ compliance scores, the data for which I gathered from the US State Department. Their reports have been criticized as being politically biased, but it was important for the research to use data that is released on a consistent basis and collected over the same period of time using the same methodology. Recently the UN released A Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, the data from which could help inform the compliance scores and make them less biased.
These findings leave room for future research. Some of the possibilities that have occurred to me while conducting this research are to look at compliance with regional treaties versus international ones; to look into new variables that could be significant; to look into why some regions show that ratification helps compliance while others do not; and to look into what strategies would work best to help eliminate trafficking based on what factors are most important to the country (such as foreign aid, etc.). This last suggestion is the next step in my research process—taking the information I have found and finding practical applications for it. This is what I hope to do with my research when I attend graduate school.
The research involving Eastern Europe was written up as a paper and was published in the 2009 edition of Sigma, BYU’s journal of Political Science and International Relations and my findings were also presented in a poster at the 2009 Mary Lou Fulton Mentored Student Research Conference. I have also coded articles on trafficking and helped create a trafficking scale for the WomanStats Database, all of which is publicly available at womanstats.org.