What is Civil Society Organizations

The issue of human trafficking has received a substantial amount of attention in recent years. Growing global concern around this grave crime has led the international community to develop a comprehensive framework for the global fight against it. One important aspect of this framework is to prevent trafficking from occurring and thus save the vulnerable from being exploited. To this end, it is essential to identify conditions that promote the achievement of strong preventative strategies. While recent reports on anti-trafficking efforts of countries have stressed the significant role of civil society in assisting governments to prevent human trafficking, the number of quantitative studies that examine this relationship has remained limited. To fill this gap, this chapter investigates empirically whether civil society participation reinforces governments' efforts to prevent trafficking. Based on the data for 165 countries over the period from 2003 to 2015, this chapter presents evidence that countries with strong civil society engagement take effective measures to prevent trafficking.