2025 Theses Master's

When the State Looks Away: Corruption in State and Financial Institutions as the Hidden Architecture of Labor and Sex Trafficking

Sunjka, Marija

Even though international legal frameworks and anti-trafficking laws and regulations exist, human trafficking persists globally. A crime that violates the most elementary human rights, which endures through all borders and boundaries. Since trafficking is often regarded as just an activity of organized crime and transnational criminal networks, this study will show that it is more than that. It will show how deeply corruption and human trafficking are connected, which will be presented through the phenomenology of corruption of government and financial systems. More specifically, this thesis will present how corruption of state institutions and financial systems enables labor and sex trafficking and will examine what this says about their structural enablers.

This study will investigate how various corrupt practices undermine and manipulate the existing anti-trafficking and anti-corruption laws, such as bribery, abuse of functions, and financial secrecy, which is why they are able to persevere without facing accountability. Through researching and analyzing various international legal documents and policies, this study will show how trafficking becomes profitable, and accountability of corrupt actors is avoided, leading to illicit financial flows being sustained in the global economy. Special focus will be given to both corruption within the state institutions, as well as within financial systems, to show how both are involved in trafficking, from physical displacement to laundering of illicit proceeds.

The message of this thesis is that human trafficking has to be understood as a systemic issue of governance failures. By addressing and investigating corruption as a key catalyst for human trafficking to take place, this study will fill the gap between the anti-trafficking and anti-corruption laws, the same gap that is exploited by corrupt officials in state and financial institutions, leading to these human rights violations.