Identified even by its critics, "The convention is essentially
an instrument of international cooperation."49 UN member states quickly recognized the cooperative value of the Trafficking Protocol,
117 signing on within only two years.50 To date, 140 nations
have become signatories. The United States led much of the post-
Palermo anti-trafficking campaign; in October of 2000 Congress
passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act
(TVPA) and has reauthorized it many times since." In addition
to the TVPA, the U.S. Department of State publishes its annual
Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report that documents every country
and rates them on how well each nation's government upholds
the legal standards outlined in U.S. and international law. Supporting
the United States, the United Kingdom has also passed
multiple iterations of anti-trafficking legislation.52 The European Union in April of 2011 passed Directive 2011/36/EU, "on preventing
and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting
its victims."53 More recently, India with the help of the United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime announced its new initiative
"Strengthening the law enforcement response in India against
Trafficking in Persons through Training and Capacity Building"
and hopes to train a large number of "Anti-Human Trafficking
Units" in the next two years. 4 Even Mongolia, a state that has been traditionally classified by the TIP Report as a tier 2 state and
one beset with trafficking issues, passed new anti-trafficking legislation
in January, 2012."5 Countries are cooperating around the
framework outlined in the UN Protocol to produce more stringent
and comprehensive anti-trafficking law.