International Law and Regional Norm Smuggling: How the EU and ASEAN Redefined the Global Regime on Human Trafficking

The European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have developed fundamentally different regional regimes to address human trafficking despite both drawing on the framework established by the U.N. Palermo Protocol. These regimes have been deployed to achieve different missions: crime control animates the European framework whereas migration management informs the ASEAN regime. These different regional agendas have led to all central elements of the respective antitrafficking regimes being addressed differently including, the legal authority of the regional regime over domestic legislation, the allocation of responsibility between “sending” and “receiving” countries, their approaches to subjects of human trafficking, and the connectedness of each antitrafficking instrument to the wider regional regimes. The two regional responses challenge general assumptions about the universality and coherence of the growing international legal framework on human trafficking.