“Sir, please help us to go back to our families”
was the unanimous tearful request by Rakesh (name changed)
aged 15, Sunil (name changed) aged 16 and Arun (name changed) aged 17, all from
a remote village in Assam. These boys were promised jobs in a garment factory
in Chennai by a local broker. They were brought to Andhra Pradesh and were sold
to a brick factory owner. The children were abused and misused in various ways.
One fine day they ran away from the factory and landed at Vijayawada railway
station where they were rescued by the Child Line staff and placed in a
Temporary Shelter run by an NGO. I met them and interacted with them in Hindi.
All of them broke into tears and said that they had committed a blunder by
trusting the broker. They shared with me some of their bad experiences of their
ill-treatment at the brick factory. Last year, I had met a group of young girls
from Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand working in Mumbai as domestic workers. Most of
them were brought by traffickers. Many of these girls go through various types
of abuses but they bear them patiently for the sake of earning an income for
their families.
As per
the United Nations,
“Trafficking in persons shall mean the recruitment, transportation,
transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of
force or other forms of coercion
, o
f abduction, of
fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or
of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a
person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.”
According to a report published by the U.S. Department of
State, India is a source, destination and transit country for men, women and
children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking. The majority of
India’s trafficking problem is internal, and those from the most disadvantaged
social strata – Dalit and Tribal communities, women and children from excluded
groups – are the most vulnerable.
It is the children of the poor and marginalized communities
who are often trafficked to be forced into labour. Parents of these children
are either betrayed or lured due to their poor socio-economic conditions thus
forcing them to ‘send’ or ‘sell’ their children for better livelihood options.
The lack of awareness is a situation that traffickers exploit especially when
it comes to uneducated poor living in slums and other backward regions in the
country. Traffickers promise daily wages to parents of young children and
transport them to big cities where they are often treated as commodities.
Families in dire financial conditions are often approached by traffickers with
an offer to buy their children and with no other escape from their pitiful
conditions, parents comply. Ultimately the t
emptation
for easy money is considered as the prime source of child trafficking.
Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha and West Bengal are
common source areas for trafficking to red-light areas across India, according
to the India Country Assessment Report 2013 on anti-human trafficking, brought
out by the United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime. Sexual exploitation for
prostitution (22 per cent) was the second major purpose of
human
trafficking in 2016 in India, after
forced labour (45 per cent). A 13-year old Geetha (name changed) living in a
remote village in Andhra Pradesh was sold by her parents to her maternal uncle.
The parents are under the impression that their daughter is working in a
garment factory with her maternal uncle. In reality the girl was sold to a
brothel keeper in the red light area of Hyderabad. A newly married bride from
Odisha landed up in the red light area of Mumbai. The person who sold her was
none other than her own husband. Such sad and shocking stories are endless.
The root causes of commercial sexual exploitation and child
trafficking in India are: poverty, lack of education, and the need to support
their families. The unemployment rate in India is very high and there are not
many financial opportunities. When children are offered work they are likely to
be taken advantage of. Children in poverty often have to trade sex for a place
to live or food. In order to get out of poverty or debt, some parents come
forward to sell their children to traffickers.
Children
that are exploited for commercial sex are subject to transactions for
child
pornography
and
child prostitution. In some parts of India, young girls are forced into the
system of Devadasi where they are "forced into a lifetime of ritual sex
slavery" and given to the village elders to be their concubines. Lot
of children have also been trafficked due to the demand by tourists. Many
international tourists travel from countries where there are strict
enforcements around child trafficking, to India to find child prostitutes.
A 2016 report conducted by the United States Department of
State designates India as a Tier-2 nation with regards to trafficking. It means
that although there are systems in place to combat the issue, comprehensive and
efficacious care is not taken to completely resolve the matter. With regards to
trafficking, India has also been defined as a transit country for primarily
forced labour where children are made to work in mills, fields and factories
for no or low wages.
Most families in India have higher numbers of children than are
financially viable, and this is only compounded by pre-existing conditions of
low income and weak family planning that makes selling daughters “in the prime
of their youth”. This seems to be a practical solution for families. However,
the biggest causal factor behind trafficking is that the children themselves
are not fully aware of their rights and are incapable of seeking out help. S
ince most trafficking occurs in remote regions that
are largely disconnected from the world, victims themselves are unaware that
there exist local organizations that work tirelessly to rid society of such
crimes against humanity.
The serious effects of child trafficking are
broadly classified into three: a)
Mental Health Disorders that include Depression, Anxiety,
Suicides, Aggression, Low self-esteem, Instability and Gambling; b) Substance Abuse
that include Alcohol, Drugs and Smoking; c) Physical Disorders that include Weight
loss, Fatigue, Insomnia, Eating problems and Diseases.
The
Sustainable Development Goals highlight the following:
·
Eliminate
all forms of violence against children and women in the public and private
spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation.
·
Take immediate and
effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the
prohibition and elimination of the
worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child
soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms.
A few questions for our
continued thinking and action:
·
"Children
are the future of the nation” - Does it not s
ound
like an ominous prophecy?
·
Despite having a national
policy for compulsory primary education, only 50% of children have access to education, why?
·
How can we explain that
even after 72 years of independence, half
of India's children are illiterate and the child slavery continues to
exist?
