From the first international agreement to the present day, policy-makers have constantly tried to re-define human trafficking in the most adequate way. The latest attempt of this hundred-year endeavor is represented by the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Human Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. The protocol is promoted as the first international instrument with an agreed definition of human trafficking: According to Bruckert and Parent, there were at least 25¹ different definitions that portrayed trafficking or used it as a synonym of smuggling or other forms of irregular migration before the UN trafficking protocol. Other human trafficking definitions have focused on the sex trade, in reminiscence with the white slave trade in the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. In contrast to the White Slave Scare Era, when the majority of the victims were portrayed as white women from industrialized countries, the main image underpinning the representation of human trafficking victims today is the naïve woman from the developing world who, in search for better conditions, becomes trapped in the world of prostitution.

Trafficked females, smuggled female migrant and female sex workers share some experiences but are also radically different in several ways; however, the different ideological frameworks of governmental and non-governmental delegates in international fora have heavily influenced the representations of these identities. The ideological gaps between the feminist positions lobbying in the negotiation committee led to protracted debates on women's agency in migration processes and its relation to human trafficking. In sum, instead of providing guidelines for identifying and protecting victims of trafficking, this thesis argues that the Protocol has opened up a loophole by which member states have an incentive to identify trafficked persons as smuggled migrants, especially in the context of the fight against transnational organized crime. Writing a new convention would not solve anything because the main obstruction resides in what could be called outdated conceptions about sovereignty that focus only in the security of the state rather on the security of individuals. This thesis explores the possibility of implementing a human security approach to human trafficking as an alternative to the current migration and anti-crime approach of the protocol. Finally, it discusses the case study on Mexico, where the militarization along Mexican-American border and the Mexican-Guatemalan border has increased in since the 1990's mainly due to the presence of drug cartels as well as the war between these drug cartels for control of trafficking routes shows that the priority of the state is to tighten the security of its borders rather than secure the integrity of the individuals crossing those borders. The author believes this analysis could be applied to other countries because the conditions are similar in other regions. In Europe, Asia and Africa, non-state actors pose a serious threat to governments, who in response strengthen security measures in the borders to safeguard the integrity of the State.

¹ Christine Bruckert and Colette Parent, “Trafficking in Human Beings and Organized Crime: A Literature Review,” Research and Evaluation Branch, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, June 2002, http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/pdfs/traffick_e.pdf (23 May 2008)