People Trafficking: Conceptual issues with the United Nations Trafficking Protocol 2000

This paper examines the UN 2000 Trafficking Protocol in the context of international responses to the issue of people trafficking. Attention is drawn to the conceptual flaws in this new instrument regarding the failure to address domestic trafficking, not incorporating the purchasing and selling of people as defining characteristics of trafficking, and the lack of clarity around issues of prostitution. Framing the discussion within feminist theory, the essay concludes that women’s campaigning will continue to be crucial to putting issues such as human trafficking on the international political agenda. This is extended to affirm that people’s struggle against oppressive circumstances will lead the tackling of the underlying causes of trafficking.