Containing Human Trafficking through State and Non-State Actors

Abstract

The globalization of socio-economic life leads to increasingly complicated interactions among individuals and organizations at national and international levels. Furthermore, the mix of democratization, deregulation, the liberalization of international trade, and the privatization of state enterprises have intensified the need for legal frameworks adapted to the new nature and scale of socio-economic interactions (Buscaglia 1997: 34). For example, the ever-increasing porosity of national frontiers to international human and financial flows gives rise to new types and increased levels of organized criminal behavior, in general, and of human trafficking, in particular (Buscaglia 1994: 30-1, Milhaupt and West 2000, Cho et al. 2011). Within criminal enterprises, globalization has a dark side that combines increasing cross-border openness with advanced technologies that allow the trafficking in a large range of goods, services, and human beings combined with money laundering and corruption involving private and public sector officials (Rose Ackerman 1978, Buscaglia 2001: 235–9). In a world with decreasing borders there is an even greater need for the effective implementation of common legal frameworks to be designed, interpreted, and enforced in a consistent, coherent, and predictable manner across international borders through legal and judicial cooperation (Buscaglia 1995: 10–14).