Fourteen years after the UN Human Trafficking Protocol - hailed as “the single most important development in the fight against human trafficking” - was adopted by the United Nations, a more modest document was opened for signature by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). This is the 2014 Protocol to the Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29) which entered into force on 9th November 2016 and which, like its better-known sister Protocol, is aimed at the “effective elimination” of trafficking in persons. Here, the similarities stop. The UN Human Trafficking Protocol is a penalising document, requiring the vigorous prosecution of organised criminals, which has been ratified by 169 states parties and enthusiastically championed by the United States. The ILO Protocol, by contrast aims at systematic preventive and regulatory action by “the competent authorities … in coordination with employers' and workers' organizations” and has been ratified by eighteen countries. The purpose of this article is to determine whether the advent of the 2014 ILO Protocol is evidence of the beginning of a fundamental shift in approach by the international community, or just another false dawn.