May 14, 2026
A significant increase in the cases of human trafficking has been seen globally, totaling a 25% surge compared to the pre-pandemic period. According to the recent reports of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in 2024, the 24% of human trafficking cases originate from East Asia and the rest of the Southeast Asian countries. In this paper, a comparative method was utilized through the lens of Neoliberal Institutionalism theory to assess the policy outcomes of the ASEAN Convention against Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (ACTIP) between the Philippines and Cambodia. The findings indicate that compliance differs between the Philippines and Cambodia due to the perceived costs and benefits of regional cooperation. Gaining reputational and developmental benefits, the Philippines highly complies compared to Cambodia, which is skeptical of institutional cooperation due to its historical distrust of multilateral mechanisms, weak legal alignment, and perceived high implementation costs.