International cooperation and the anti-trafficking regime

States have cooperated on combating trafficking in persons for over a century. Over this period, the focus of countering trafficking in persons has broadened, moving from women exclusively, to include all persons, and from prostitution to nearly all forms of exploitation. As both the definition of groups of trafficked persons and their numbers have expanded, reasons for state cooperation to combat trafficking have also changed. This paper seeks to explain what has induced state cooperation in the negotiation processes of the anti-trafficking regime in 1949 and in 2000 by applying economic and neo-liberal institutionalist international relations theories of public goods. By explaining what benefits states expected to gain in the 1949 and 2000 cases, both publically and privately through participation in negotiations on two anti-trafficking treaties, we can better understand the starting points of cooperation.