The results underscore the tensions between competing frameworks in domestic-level responses to the trafficking of women that occur among the immigration, human rights, policing, and social services imperatives. The analysis also highlights the ambiguities in the United Nation's Anti-Trafficking Protocol that permits a wide scope for discretion at the domestic level in terms of anti-trafficking policies and practices. Competing perspectives on the exploitation of prostitution and on the impact of migration on globalization and material inequality have effectively watered down the United Nations' Protocol so that its provisions may be manipulated in accordance with domestic agendas related to border integrity and the suppression of criminal activities. The findings point to the need to focus anti-trafficking initiatives on the domestic stage in addition to the international and regional levels. Data examined for this article were drawn from the findings of empirical fieldwork undertaken in the targeted countries over a 2-year period from 2002 to 2004. The fieldwork was designed to assess the extent to which anti-trafficking policies in each country were being translated into practice and to assess the extent to which the domestic level anti-trafficking policies and practices were influenced by or reflective of different political and social agendas, including human rights, criminality, immigration, labor, gender, and prostitution agendas. Footnotes, references