The Palermo Protocol , adopted by the UN in 2010, defines the crime of ‘trafficking in persons’. States which ratify the Protocol are committed to introducing legislation to combat this crime. It has been argued, however, that the Protocol, by regarding trafficked persons purely as victims, in some ways exacerbates the very serious problems that they face. An alternative approach, it has suggested, would be to regard trafficking persons as individuals whose rights have been violated. The problem, however, is to determine which body is responsible for ensuring that such individuals have effective access to these rights. Is it the state from which trafficked persons are taken, the state to which they are trafficked, or some other transnational political organization? This problem, I shall argue, presents an important challenge to recognition theory, which to date has tended to assume that relations of recognition take place within the borders of particular states. By extending this theory in order to enable it to respond to the problem of trafficking, I shall seek to show how it can have genuinely transnational scope.
