Abstract
Human Trafficking is a worldwide problem where humans are trapped in coercion and exploitation. An estimated 21 million humans are victims to this crime, and even though there is a general agreement of its undesirability, research of its driving forces is scarce. The lack of facts and knowledge on this topic, makes current policy implementation based on feeling and beliefs rather than figures and data. In order to battle the problem, we need more research conducted and completed on the topic. In this thesis I examine the relationship between historic slave trade and present day human trafficking in Africa. Expanding the argument set forth by Nunn (2008), that ethnic fractionalization was influenced by the slave trade, I test if ethnic fractionalization effects the level of trafficking outflows from a country today. The data used is from Nunn (2008) and the Trafficking in Persons Report 2006 (UNODC, 2006) combined with additional data from the World Bank. I find a positive relationship between the export of slaves from a country and present day human trafficking; if a country had high numbers of slaves exported, they are prone to also have high levels of human trafficking. I continue by examining the hypothesis that ethnic fractionalization can be the driving force of this relation, and find this to be possible. The empirical analysis shows a positive and statistically significant effect of ethnic fractionalization on human trafficking, robust to re-specifications of the regression. Though data limitations make it hard to pin down exact causality, I argue that this is a plausible explanation, also because ethnic fractionalization is known to influence other aspects of the society.