The International Traffic in Women: Scandinavia and the League of Nations Inquiry of 1927

Abstract

During the 1920s, the League of Nations commissioned the first worldwide study of human trafficking. The study reveals a great deal about the role of the League in crime prevention during the inter-war period and development of human trafficking as an international threat. The official report of 1927 presented material from field visits to 28 countries across Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Americas, but not Scandinavia. The researchers used a definition of ‘traffic in women’ to suit the policy-making agenda, but when contemplating the situation in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden they realized they had laid a conceptual trap from which they could not escape. Although the League's research has been forgotten, the ‘Scandinavian dilemma’ continues to haunt the international response to human trafficking.