Human Trafficking in [India Street Children in [India] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [India] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery Republic of India [ Country-by-Country
Reports ] The Republic of India [map]
is the second most populous country in the world, stretching from the Arabian
Sea (W) to the Bay of Bengal (E), bordering Pakistan (W); China, Nepal, and
Bhutan (N); Bangladesh (NE); and Myanmar (E).
India is a source, destination, and transit country for
men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and
commercial sexual exploitation. Internal forced labor may constitute India’s
largest trafficking problem; men, women, and children are held in debt
bondage and face forced labor working in brick kilns, rice mills,
agriculture, and embroidery factories. While no comprehensive study of forced
and bonded labor has been completed, NGOs estimate this problem affects 20 to
65 million Indians. Women and girls are trafficked within the country for the
purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage. Children are
subjected to forced labor as factory workers, domestic servants, beggars, and
agriculture workers, and have been used as armed combatants by some terrorist
and insurgent groups. India is also a destination for women and girls from
Nepal and Bangladesh trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual
exploitation. Nepali children are also trafficked to India for forced labor
in circus shows. Indian women are trafficked to the Middle East for
commercial sexual exploitation. There are also victims of labor trafficking
among the thousands of Indians who migrate willingly every year to the Middle
East, Europe, and the United States for work as domestic servants and
low-skilled laborers. In some cases, such workers are the victims of fraudulent
recruitment practices that lead them directly into situations of forced
labor, including debt bondage; in other cases, high debts incurred to pay
recruitment fees leave them vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous
employers in the destination countries, where some are subjected to
conditions of involuntary servitude, including non-payment of wages,
restrictions on movement, unlawful withholding of passports, and physical or
sexual abuse. Men and women from Bangladesh and Nepal are trafficked through
India for forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation in the Middle East.
Indian nationals travel to Nepal and within the country for child sex tourism. - U.S. State Dept Trafficking in
Persons Report, June, 2008 [full country report] |
|
|
CAUTION: The following links have been
culled from the web to illuminate the situation in ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** One wishes the circumstances were the same, but they seldom are. How does one equate a girl lured away from a village in Meghalaya to a brothel in Delhi with the one pushed into beedi-binding by her own parents just so there is enough money to feed all the mouths in the family? Or a boy thrown into the laps of paedophiliac foreign tourists in Goa with one who runs away from starvation and poverty at home, to be picked up and employed by a brick-kiln owner who gives him a paltry daily wage and lunch? Which arm of the State — women and child development, labour, police, or home affairs if there is border-crossing — has failed to do its job in each of these cases, and which is responsible for ensuring that the trafficked person gets a livelihood and a respectable life? This is why trafficking is such a
tricky crime in developing countries with their many areas of darkness. In
Haryana, for instance, where it is acceptable to destroy female foetuses and
kill baby girls, young women are trafficked from Bengal and the Northeast and
forced into marriage to keep the family line going. How does one, in the
absence of a complaint from the girl or her family, initiate criminal
proceedings against those who claim the girl as their daughter-in-law? Police rescue trafficking suspect from mob fury Police on Tuesday rescued a former employee of a Bhubaneswar-based placement agency facing charges of trafficking youths from this region to Malaysia from a frenzied mob in Nikiraia village, 15 km from here. The villagers gave vent to their anger as about four youths from the area reportedly enslaved in Malaysia since their departure three months back. The mob badly beat up Sunil Das and held him captive in the village. The irate mob pounced on him demanding the refund of money that the Malaysia bound youths had paid to the placement agency, police said. A Dalit youth from this part of the state had undergone a two-month-long nightmarish ordeal in Malaysia and escaped from the clutches of a well-knit human trafficking racket, bringing to the fore the harrowing plight of a number of unemployed local youths still stranded in Malaysia in their quest for greener pastures. ***
ARCHIVES *** CHILDLINE
- Toll Free Call 1098 - Night & Day CHILDLINE reaches out to all children in
need of care and protection such as: street children, child labourers,
children who have been abused, child victims of flesh trade, differently-abled
children, child addicts, children in conflict with the law, children in
institutions, mentally challenged children, HIV/AIDs infected children,
children affected by conflict and disaster, child political refugees,
children whose families are in crises. Delhi Govt. Started the toll free 'Youth Phone service’ 1-800-11-6888 The Government of Delhi running
the 'youth' helpline named Yuva Phone line in Delhi. The counsellors are
available round the clock on toll free no 1800116888. The helpline is specially for students. Website
to track missing children launched Anyone who has lost their child
can post a message on this website and a search will be set in motion simultaneously
in 40 cities in the country. Launched
by Don Bosco National Forum for Youth at Risk in association with UNICEF,
www.missingchildsearch.net
will be closely
watched and monitored by child welfare organisations in all major cities in
the country and a search will be generated immediately. The Don Bosco
National Forum for Youth at Risk is a major partner of Childline India
Foundation and extends service to hundreds of children who are victims of
war, conflict, natural calamities, sexual exploitation, trafficking and
HIV/AIDS. They also take care of street and working children. U.S. Dept
of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Bonded or forced child labor is a problem and exists in several
industries. Recent reports indicate
that the practice exists in carpet manufacturing and silk weaving. Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS – Within the country, women from economically depressed areas often moved to cities seeking greater economic opportunities, and once there they were often forced by traffickers into prostitution. In many cases, family members sold young girls into prostitution. Extreme poverty, combined with the low social status of women, often resulted in parents handing over their children to strangers for what they believed was employment or marriage. In some instances, parents received payments or the promise that their children would send wages back home. According to the Boys, often as young as age four were trafficked to the
Middle East or the Persian Gulf as jockeys in camel races, and many boys
ended up as beggars in Saudi Arabia during Hajj (pilgrimage). The majority of
such children worked with the knowledge of their parents, who received $200
(Rs. 9,300) for their child's labor. Many children were kidnapped for forced
labor, with kidnappers earning approximately $150 (Rs. seven thousand) per
month from the labor of each child. The child's names were usually added to
the passport of a Bangladeshi or female citizen who already had a visa for
the Gulf. Girls and women were trafficked to the Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2004 [74] The Committee welcomes the
ratification of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)
Convention on Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Women and Children for
Prostitution; the adoption of a plan of action to combat trafficking and
commercial sexual exploitation of women and children; the initiative to
undertake a study, inter alia, to collect data on the number of children and
women who become victims of sexual exploitation and trafficking; and the
Pilot Projects to Combat Trafficking of Children for Commercial Sexual
Exploitation in Destination and Source Areas, but remains concerned that the
Immoral Traffic Prevention Act, 1986 does not define trafficking and limits
its scope to sexual exploitation. In addition, the Committee expresses its
concern at the increasing number of child victims of sexual exploitation,
including prostitution and pornography. Concern is also expressed at the
insufficient programs for the physical and psychological recovery and social
reintegration of child victims of such abuse and exploitation. West
Bengals sex workers remarkable fight against HIV To stop human trafficking in sex
trade, a self-regulatory board has been established by the sex workers. The board works as a filter and it checks
whether the new girl joining the trade is an adult or a minor. This board
also tries to find out if any new girl joining the profession is under any
pressure to do so. This has been very
successful way to check human trafficking, police raids have also reduced
considerably, said Swapna Gayen, who too is a sex worker in Sonagachi for
over two decades. Is Christmas
really Merry for Indian Children? The much-hyped policy against
child labour has shown little results. In Shahpur village in Vaishali
district in Bihar, children were being used as beasts of burden. But the
mindset of people was such that, none of them wanted to help those children.
The boys were being used instead of bullocks for ploughing the land and the
land under question belongs to the minister for rural development Raghuvansh
Prasad’s brother Raghuraj Singh. Child labour right under the nose of the
ministry! Children under the age of 14 are
forced to work in glass, fireworks, and most commonly, carpet-making
factories. India has the largest number of uneducated children in the world.
We boast of abysmal numbers, with 75 million children suffering from
malnutrition and more than a 100 million being uneducated. The Sarva Shiksha
Abhiyan, the Mid Day meal scheme have not shown the desirous results yet,
with 70 per cent dropout rate of children before the 10th standard. Trafficking
victim awaits permanent home Abandoned at the Gurgaon bus stand
on Thursday, a 14-year-old victim of human trafficking is left in the lurch
with no one willing to offer her a solution, or a long-term shelter. Neither
the local police stations nor NGOs are ready to take care of her. A resident of Gopalganj in Bihar,
the victim was married off to a 45-year-old man (one Pramod) as her father
could not repay money he had borrowed, the victim has said. The marriage took
place in Bihar on March 10, and she was brought to Rohtak a couple of months
ago, the victim said. According to the United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), between two to three million people are
trafficked annually in and out of India. Most disturbingly, a large number of
people, especially girls and women, from states such as Andhra Pradesh,
Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Orissa and the north-eastern region, are
trafficked to the metros such as Delhi and Mumbai. People from these states are
trafficked to work in brothels, dance bars, pubs, restaurants, friendship
clubs, massage parlours and for domestic chores, says Dr P M Nair, a senior
police official and co-author of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC)
study entitled 'Trafficking in Women and Children in India'. Human
trafficking burst in Chhattisgarh, 400 villagers rescued Over 400 villagers from Mahasamund
district have been rescued by the Chhattisgarh government officials when they
were being transported outside the state, a senior official said on Friday. "All the villagers were put
inside the containers which did not have have sufficient ventilation or light
and were being transported like animals," she said. Women emerge
as primary victims in trafficking Porous borders with economically poorer Bangladesh
and Nepal (from where none need visa to visit India) aggravate the problem of
cross-border trafficking. Bangladesh remained a source country for women and
children for a quite a long time, traffickers target their preys in the
poverty stricken rural areas. On the
other hand, Nepal is identified as a source country in the region. Fair
looking Nepali young women are the primary victims of the trafficking, though
new trend emerges with attraction for boys too. Unconfirmed statistics reveal
that in average 12,000 Nepali women with minors are trafficked every year for
sexual exploitation in outer countries. Most of the trafficked women from
Nepal were later found infected with HIV/AIDS and also tuberculosis. Addressing the conference, the minister Ms Chowdhury
also argued that trafficking is by and large a gendered phenomenon. The
trafficking in India is primarily for the purpose of commercial sexual
exploitation. There are nearly three million sex workers in India and 40 per
cent of them are children or adolescent girls. Statistics reveal that
children below the age of 10 years are also found in the brothel of Indian
cities like Mumbai and Delhi now a day, the minister disclosed. "Many believe that having sex with
young and virgin girls would cure them of diseases. It is nonsense," Ms
Chowdhury uttered. She emphasized on reducing the demand for prostitutes,
engagement of children in workplaces, use of forced labour and empowering all
collaborative efforts of governments, NGOs and other institutions to deal
with the situation. - htcp 25
arrested for human trafficking; 200 labourers rescued in Indian state At least 200 persons, including women
and children, were rescued from forced labour and 25 middlemen were arrested
in this regard, police said Friday. The rescued include 70 persons,
who were confined for three days in a forest in the jurisdiction of Turekela
police station area and 30 others, who were rescued from Titilagarh railway
station. One wishes the circumstances were
the same, but they seldom are. How does one equate a girl lured away from a
village in Meghalaya to a brothel in Delhi with the one pushed into
beedi-binding by her own parents just so there is enough money to feed all
the mouths in the family? Or a boy thrown into the laps of paedophiliac
foreign tourists in Goa with one who runs away from starvation and poverty at
home, to be picked up and employed by a brick-kiln owner who gives him a
paltry daily wage and lunch? Which arm of the State — women and child
development, labour, police, or home affairs if there is border-crossing —
has failed to do its job in each of these cases, and which is responsible for
ensuring that the trafficked person gets a livelihood and a respectable life? This is why trafficking is such a
tricky crime in developing countries with their many areas of darkness. In
Haryana, for instance, where it is acceptable to destroy female foetuses and
kill baby girls, young women are trafficked from Bengal and the Northeast and
forced into marriage to keep the family line going. How does one, in the
absence of a complaint from the girl or her family, initiate criminal
proceedings against those who claim the girl as their daughter-in-law? UN
seeks end to human trafficking GOALS - Every day in South Asia children and young women
are lured or taken from their homes with promises of a job, marriage or a
place in the entertainment industry.
Instead, they end up in the sex trade or as forced labour. India
is the hub of this trade, with organised crime syndicates trafficking women
and children both within the country and from across the border in Nepal or
Bangladesh. Sarpanch
held for human trafficking A country-made revolver was seized
from the sarpanch. On a tipoff, Patnagarh police, led by DSP (crime) N C
Dandsena, rescued the 40 labourers when they were being taken to a nearby
railway station to work in a brick kiln unit.
Police said the Sarpanch had given some money to the labourers in
advance and forced them to go to Hyderabad. They were to work in the brick
kiln for five months. Over
650 Indian trafficking victims rescued: UNODC Over 650 Indians, including 138
minors, who were victims to human trafficking, were rescued during the first
six months of this year, an United Nations agency said here today. He claimed the average age of
girls being trafficked in South Asia was dropping. "While in 1980, the average age of
trafficked girls was 14 to 16 years, it dropped to 10-14 years in 1994. The figure
in 2006 has decreased," he said. Human trafficking
has become a billion-dollar business: UN report The United Nations report also
said, that girls and women from West Bengal and Assam are being increasingly
trafficked to Punjab and Haryana, where they are sexually exploited until
they bear a male child. “(There is an) emerging pattern of
trafficking in girls from West Bengal and Assam to the more prosperous states
of Punjab and Haryana, where the gender gap is most acute…The woman is either
abandoned or passed onto another man after the birth of the male child,” the
study said. Human
trafficking helps spread HIV/AIDS in Asia: UN "Trafficking ... contributes
to the spread of HIV by significantly increasing the vulnerability of
trafficked persons to infection," said Caitlin Wiesen-Antin, HIV/AIDS
regional coordinator, Asia and Pacific, for the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP). "Both human
trafficking and HIV greatly threaten human development and security." Major human trafficking routes run
between Nepal and India and
between Thailand and neighbors like Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. Many of the
victims are young teenage girls who end up in prostitution. "The link between human trafficking
and HIV/AIDS has only been identified fairly recently," Wiesen-Antin
told the International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific. Police
rescue trafficking suspect from mob fury Police on Tuesday rescued a former
employee of a Bhubaneswar-based placement agency facing charges of
trafficking youths from this region to Malaysia from a frenzied mob in
Nikiraia village, 15 km from here. The villagers gave vent to their anger as
about four youths from the area reportedly enslaved in Malaysia since their
departure three months back. The mob badly beat up Sunil Das
and held him captive in the village. The irate mob pounced on him demanding
the refund of money that the Malaysia bound youths had paid to the placement
agency, police said. A Dalit youth from this part of
the state had undergone a two-month-long nightmarish ordeal in Malaysia and
escaped from the clutches of a well-knit human trafficking racket, bringing
to the fore the harrowing plight of a number of unemployed local youths still
stranded in Malaysia in their quest for greener pastures. Church
organizes struggle against human trafficking Many girls from the region are
also taken to Indian cities with promises of jobs, said Shimray, a native of
Manipur state. Shimray said many women
are taken from their homes after being promised jobs as domestic maids. The
educated ones are promised jobs in hotels and city firms, she added. In many
cases, those who entrap the women are members of their own families,
relatives or people close to them. In the period, the state recorded
3,718 missing female adults. Among them, 1,837 are still untraceable. During
the same period 4,259 girls went missing and only 1,918 were traced, Borah
said. Guard
Against Human Trafficking These marriage offers come for a
consideration ranging between Rs 5,000 and Rs 1 lakh,which are ascertained on
the basis of her beauty. In some situations, poor family members sell
children hoping that they will get a good life, job or education. However,
most of them end up in a brothel or simply they are forced to have sex with
clientele." Traffickers often use local people
(sub-agents) in a community or village to find young women and children, and
target families who are poor and vulnerable. "One of the major problems
with making arrests is that the victim's family does not complain as it does
not want to be used as witnesses against the agents or gangs involved in
trafficking," an officer said. The increase in human trafficking
cases in the last couple of years is worrying NGOs and exposes the
government’s apathy towards the social evil.
Figures say that more than 60 girls from Karnataka, who fell prey to
human trafficking, have been rescued from brothels and red light areas in
Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi. These
rescued girls, in the age-group of 12 to 20 years, are mostly from the
northern districts of Bijapur, Bagalkot, Shimoga, Mysore, Mandya and
Chamrajnagar. They fall easy prey to
the agents who assure them of jobs and attractive earnings, but they land up
in brothels. State
unaware of child abuse situation, projecting deflated figues The pilgrim town of Puri is a
haven for child prostitution and rampant paedophilia. A recent study
conducted by the Institute of Socio Economic Development with support from
United Nations Development Fund for Women says that Puri is the heart of
child trafficking and accounts for over 43 percent of the cases. But the State Administration and
Police make no attempt to move because the holy town also happens to be a
tourist hotspot. But the real cause of concern lies
elsewhere. Domestic abuse continues unabated and even in the face of newer
and stringent legislation. Having children as domestic helps is a common
practice and they are the major victims of abuse. The sensational incident of child
torture by royals of Khariar in 2004 had amply revealed the magnitude of the
problem. The Crime Branch of Orissa Police arrested the former royal BP Singh
Deo and his wife Pushpalata Singh Deo who allegedly branded their 8-year-old
domestic help. The new and stringent legislation
has not been able to rein in the menace. Children are not only afraid of
reporting the abuse in fear of retribution, loss of livelihood also deters
them to disclose. UN GIFT - Global
Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking At the grass roots where the
problem is most acute, non-governmental organizations and other civil society
groups play a key role. They are the eyes and ears of the global community,
and are in the front line of the anti-trafficking movement, protecting
victims and helping the survivors. A number of private individuals, either
through foundations, the media or on their own initiative, are champions of
the anti-trafficking cause. Their work, either to raise global awareness or
to tackle local problems, is an inspiration to us all. If these various initiatives
at different levels and in different parts of the world could unite, the
chances of ending human trafficking would increase significantly. Therefore, the initiative aims to
harness and synergize these efforts, get others to join them, and set in
motion a broad-based global movement that will attract the political will and
resources needed to stop human trafficking. UNODC is the facilitator of the
process, channeling existing efforts into a cohesive framework rather than
re-inventing the wheel. It is time to join forces to end
human trafficking. This is a global problem that requires a global solution.
The Global Initiative creates a common banner under which we can all rally. How to change the
world - The role of the social entreprenuer As Childline expanded to new
cities, the call-tracking system also emerged as an important source of child
protection information. National data showed that the biggest killer of
street children was tuberculosis, but regional call patterns revealed a
variety of local problems. In Jaipur, for example, childline received reports
of abuse in the garment and jewelry industries. In Varanasi, there were
reports of children being abducted to work in the sari industry. In Delhi,
many calls came from middle-class children. In Nagpur, a transit hub, there
were frequent reports of children abandoned in train stations. In Goa, a
beach resort, a major problem was the sexual abuse of children by foreign
tourists. Panel
Draws Attention to Human Trafficking Thirty families living in a
village in the Tiruvallur district of India all have one thing in common: They
are now free after spending years in bonded labor at a nearby brick kiln,
said Gayatri Patel, who visited the village in 2006. "The people I met with told
me the owner of the brick kiln who had practically enslaved these people had
been arrested, but he was only sentenced to one night in prison," Patel
recently told a Georgetown audience. "The next morning when he left, he
just went back to his brick kiln, rounded up another 100 bonded laborers and
put them to work." NGO
worker involved in human trafficking arrested Arrest of an activist working for
a non-government organisation (NGO) for his alleged involvement in human
trafficking of 13 Nepalese women in Maharajganj district on Thursday has put
a question mark over the very genuineness of such agencies involved in the
eradication of the menace. This
worker, arrested along with a policeman, was working for the NGO Manav Sewa
Sansthan. March
denounces child trafficking LURED BY SWEETS - Kailash Satyarthi, chairman of
the Global March Against Child Labour, says South Asia is a major source,
destination and transit area for child trafficking of all forms. “Children are being taken for forced labour
and bonded labour," he says. "Children are being used for
child marriages. Child prostitution is of course there, then a lot of
children are taken as camel jockeys."
Thousands of children work in roadside food stalls Some children, he says, are
kidnapped and sold so their organs can be harvested for transplant
operations. One of the young marchers is a boy
of 13 who says he was lured from his village in Bihar by a man with sweets, kidnapped,
and taken to Punjab where he was made to work 12 hours a day, every day. Human trafficking
is a $32 bn worldwide business Afsana Khatun, a 15-year-old
Muslim girl from Kolkata's Kidderpore area, has never met 13-year-old Rakesh
who works for 18 hours in a Punjab village like a slave after he was
trafficked from his native village in Bihar.
But on Sunday, Afsana will march with thousands of others from Kolkata
so that Rakesh and other boys and girls of his age who are trafficked every
day are not enslaved in a stone quarry or a red light area forever. 'The objective of this march is to
build a mass movement against child trafficking and forced labour. There is
no regional protocol to prohibit trafficking. We would march to make the
government answerable and people aware,' he said. Four
held for human trafficking; three girls rescued Three young women aged 18 to 20
years were rescued from being trafficked and four persons arrested in this
connection here on Tuesday, police said. The girls belonging to
Vijayawada city were lured on the promise of jobs in Hyderabad. TRAFFICKING AND CHILD MARRIAGE - Due to a demographic imbalance
in Haryana (850 girls/1000 boys), men find it difficult to find a bride. The
easy way out has been through a network of touts who help men, young old and
widowed men to find wives from West Bengal, Assam and Bihar. An estimated
5000 girls were sold in the Mewat region of Haryana. Of Serious Concern1 http://www.gorkhapatra.org.np/content.php?nid=10333 Incidents of human trafficking are
on the rise in the country despite the presence of a number of organisations,
both in the private and government sectors, and the powerful media that makes
each incident of human trafficking public. The latest case of human
trafficking was revealed in Nepalgunj the other day when a suspected
trafficker was arrested while trying to traffic four boys and five girls
across the border. Thanks to Maiti Nepal, an NGO working for the well-being
of helpless girls, the police arrested the suspected trafficker. Though there
is no official record regarding the number of Nepalese girls trafficked to
Indian brothels, thousands of Nepalese girls are said to live lives of untold
misery in the Indian brothels. Four arrested for human trafficking1 CID Crime Branch sleuths on
Saturday said they’ve arrested four persons who are involved in trafficking
two girls allegedly for the purpose of trafficking. On interrogation, police found
that the girls were brought from outside the state and were being supplied by
a couple to a middleman in Goa, who in turn sent girls to prospective
customers. 4 held for
human trafficking, inter-state racket busted Samir went the to urinal while the
announcement was being made but when he returned, both his daughter-in-law
and the man, identified as Ramesh, were missing, said police. During investigations, police
found that Ramesh, who stays in Usmanpur Pusta, northwest Delhi, had gone to
Roorkee in Uttaranchal and followed him. At Roorkee bus stop, Ramesh and one
Sandhya Devi were arrested while they were settling a deal of Rs 20,000 for
the victim, police said. Police raided Sandhya's house in Roorkee and rescued
a 15-year-old girl, who was kidnapped from Old Delhi Railway Station earlier. Pak
one of the key sources of women trafficking in world: UN report A UN report has described Pakistan
as the “one of the key sources of women trafficking” in the world. It said that India had also lately emerged
as a key destination and transit point for global trafficking of women and
girls. Bombay HC Lambasts Police Inaction in Curbing Human Trafficking The court was hearing a petition
filed by a non-government organisation "Prerna" which has sought
reinvestigation into the case wherein nine girls, who had been rescued from a
brothel in 2002, had gone missing. The court was told that the number
of minor girls rescued from brothels during the last three years was
shocking. As many as 26 girls were rescued in 2003, twelve in 2004, 31 girls were
rescued in 2005 and 27 during the current year, the court was told. Human
trafficking from Nepal on rise Trafficking of Nepalese women and
children into India, especially from the western districts, has increased
significantly in recent days due to lax security at border checkpoints. A large number of women and
children are being trafficked into India from checkpoints west of Butwal, representatives
of several Indian and Nepalese non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and
security officials stated during an interaction on 'controlling cross-border
human trafficking'. Woman
held for human trafficking A middle-aged woman allegedly
engaged in trafficking of humans was caught at New Delhi railway station on
Monday after a woman she had sold to a brothel-owner on G.B. Road here eight years
ago identified her. The accused had come to the Capital to sell another young
woman from Latur in Maharashtra to flesh traders. Nodal
cell in Home Ministry to deal with human trafficking The centre has directed state
governments to deal with such crimes in a holistic manner and to evolve an
effective and comprehensive strategy encompassing rescue, relief and
rehabilitation of victims besides deterrent action against violators. Govt push
to drive against human trafficking A total of 8900 cases of
trafficking were registered in 2004-2005. 13,300 persons were arrested, 93%
of them women and minors. 85% of them were convicted, IPS officer P Nair,
currently on deputation to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
(UNODC), quotes these figures to illustrate how the justice system is
criminalising victims, but not traffickers. Budhia Singh was sold as a baby by
his illiterate and impoverished mother. Now, aged five, he is India's most
improbable young sports star, famed for his astonishing feats of endurance
running. India
to fight human trafficking at grassroots Village heads across impoverished
rural India will be asked to help fight human trafficking by keeping a
register of people who leave in search of work. The United Nations Development Project
(UNDP) is also asking village chiefs to watch out for traffickers who lure
villagers with promises of well-paid jobs but force them into the sex trade. India is transit hub for human trafficking The study said 72 percent of human trafficking is for commercial sex, 80.26 percent of trafficking of women takes place in Bihar - most of it happening during migration for labour - and 12.36 percent of the total trafficking is due to family traditions. Human
trafficking turning into organised crime in India "Trafficking can be disguised
as migration, commercial sex or marriage. But what begins as a voluntary
decision often ends up as trafficking as victims find themselves in
unfamiliar destinations, subjected to unexpected work," said E
Rajarethinam of GCT. Pointing out that trafficking is
deeply related to deprivation, Jill Shirey, a consultant at American Centre
for International Labour Solidarity (ACILS) said that people are "forced
into accepting unknown jobs due to lack of options." India rejects U. S. criticism for inability to control human trafficking The Indian ministry statement said
India and the United States have an ongoing dialogue on the trafficking in
persons, and the annual report "certainly is not helpful to furthering
our dialogue." Rep. Christopher Smith, a
Republican author of the 2000 law that established the annual trafficking
reports, said in Washington that the Bush administration went too easy on
India by placing it on the watch list instead of among the dozen worst
offenders. Microsoft
Teams with CAP to Train Victims of Human Trafficking in IT Microsoft Corp. India Private
Limited, under its Project Jyoti program, has announced a grant of around Rs.
2.2 crore to CAP (Child and Police project), a Hyderabad-based NGO, to
provide IT skills training to victims of human trafficking as well as
vulnerable communities at risk of trafficking. Press
release: Friday, November 15, 2002 The Free Software Foundation of
India would like to bring to the attention of the Government and the general
public the negative implications of the "investment pledges" made
by the Microsoft Chairman, Bill Gates, during his present visit to
India. At the outset, it needs to be
made very clear that the proposed investments have no motive other than the
motive of profit and nobody should be under the illusion that these
"investments" are being made for the betterment of society or for
the development of India. On the contrary, the type of software developed and
sold by Microsoft, proprietary software, -- software which is supplied without
its underlying source code and without the freedoms to study, modify and
redistribute it -- constrains indigenous development and divides society. Human
trafficking in the northeast fuelling HIV/AIDS We visited 25 relief camps of
internally displaced persons [IDPs] in Kokrajhar in Bodoland Territorial
Council, Assam [state]. Nearly 200,000 people are living in these camps
without proper food. Traffickers carry out recruitment drives in such relief
camps. They make false promises of jobs as domestic help in big cities. Bangladesh
busts human trafficking ring: 34 rescued The women and children, some as
young as five-years-old, were brought by the traffickers from four
neighbourhood districts with false promises of lucrative jobs in India. But they are mostly forced into
prostitution as they illegally enter India, said Adhikar, a local
non-government charity for children from poor families. Need to rid
Gujarat of human trafficking Last August, the city police had
raided several embroidery units in Rakhial and rescued 84 child labourers
from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The boys, aged between seven and 17 years, had
come to Gujarat in search of employment. Subsequent raids by juvenile remand
home officials and cops on jewellery production units revealed that child
labourers from West Bengal and Orissa were working in sub-human conditions
for some money to send back home. Historians will look back in
puzzlement at the way our 21st century world tolerates the slavery of more
than a million children in brothels around the world. India alone may have half a
million children in its brothels, more than any other country in the world.
Visit the brothel district in almost any city in India, and you can meet
14-year-old girls who have been kidnapped off the street, or drugged, or
offered jobs as maids, and then sold into a world that they often escape only
by dying of AIDS. Indo-Pak
girls forced into prostitution In a startling case of organised women
trafficking that has come to light, Pakistani and Indian girls aged between
11 and 13 are being smuggled to the Middle East countries for being forced
into prostitution there. The girls, who are shown as aged between 20 and 22
on their passports, are brought to these countries on the pretext of getting
them attracting jobs. Hitting Brothel Owners where it Hurts [24 January 2006] Imagine what you would have done if you'd been in Hasina Bibi's sandals. She was a lonely 16-year-old working in a garment factory in Bangladesh when an older employee began mothering her. They grew close, and one day the older woman gave Hasina some cakes to eat. Two days later, Hasina emerged from a drug-induced stupor in India, sold to a brothel in faraway Gujarat. The brothel's owner beat Hasina and threatened to deform her face with acid if she tried to escape. She had to do whatever the customers wanted, with or without condoms. Caritas India Campaign against Hunger and Disease, 2005 THE TRAFFICKED VICTIM IS SUBJECTED TO WORST FORM OF HUMAN RIGHT ABUSES - Mona, (not her real name) a girl from Jharkhand, aged 14 years, had been trafficked to Delhi for domestic work. Her father sold her to an agent for Rupees 18, 000. In Delhi, the agent told her employers that they should pay her salary directly to him, so that he can forward the money to her poor parents. But in reality, no money reached Mona’s parents. Prostitution
of Nepalese girls rampant in Indian brothel ''Young girls are trafficked from US accuses NGO of 'trafficking' US government is getting tough on the issue of trafficking of human beings. Indicating its seriousness on the issue, the US government-funding agency USAID terminated funding to the NGO Sampada Grameen Mahila Sanstha (SANGRAM) for reportedly supporting brothel owners and obstructing the rescue of minor girls from red light areas. Northeast
girls in metros forced into prostitution Gullible young girls from the
northeast are being forced into prostitution in the metropolises after being
lured by organized syndicates promising them glamorous careers and lucrative
jobs, a rights group has said. "The situation is extremely serious with
smart operators flooding the northeast hunting for good looking young girls
for modeling assignments or jobs in call centers with good salaries,"
said Hasina Kharbih, chairperson of Impulse NGO Network. "But in reality, many of these women
were pushed into the notorious world of prostitution." Slavery is not dead in Police
rescue 24 girls from red light area Police said the rescued girls had
been whisked away from various places in Tasmina Khatun agreed to elope
with Muku Mondal, a man she loved, not knowing the nightmare she was
inviting. Police yesterday rescued the
15-year-old girl from the Sunderbans when she was about to be taken to Bangla prostitution racket busted in Goa The minor girl, Mallika, hailing
from a poverty stricken family, was approached by a 'sympathetic-looking'
Bangladeshi woman, who offered to take the girl to Mumbai with the promise
that the family would see a change in their fortunes. At Apna Ghar, Mallika narrated her woeful
tale of being bought in from Speaking
out for the `nameless' "Anamika" (the nameless)
is a documentary on trafficking of women and children from Andhra Pradesh to
various parts of the country. It
narrates how young girls are deceived, forced or coerced to enter the trade
every year. The
face that launched a thousand shares Thousands of Indians, especially
women and children, are trafficked everyday to some destination or the other
and are forced to lead lives of slavery. They survive in brothels, factories,
guesthouses, dance bars, farms and even in the homes of well-off Indians,
with no control over their bodies and lives. Women and children are also
being trafficked for illegal adoptions, organ transplants, the circus and the
entertainment industry. In the tender age of five or six
these children are made to work up to fifteen hours a day in stone quarries,
fields, picking rags on city streets or as domestic servants. They do not go
to school, and throughout their lifetime they possibly wouldn’t even have the
barest skills of literacy. Couple
Arrested For Human Trafficking Sunil Dayalkar alias Sanjay More
and wife Kushi alias Nishikant Biswas allegedly bought Asha (name changed)
from one Sanjay Dutt for Rs 65,000 and then forced her into prostitution. This
Will Force Us To Clean Up Our Act NGOs estimate that at least 7,000
girls are trafficked into 17,000
Nepal Women Forced Into Prostitution In India According to the study, the
investigators talked personally to the Nepali women in the brothels of The
Saving of Innocents - The Satya Interview with Ruchira Gupta An uncle or a family friend pays the parent something
like $30. There is the middleman in a packed city, the border guard who takes
a payoff, and the agent who takes the girls across the border to the people
who then transport them to Human
Trafficking Situation In India Grim "The Government of India has shown little progress in addressing anti-trafficking in persons concerns since May... In Mumbai, convictions for trafficking-related offences increased from three in 2003 to 11 thus far in 2004 but remain grossly unrepresentative in a city of over 18 million inhabitants." Freedom
House Country Report - Political Rights: 2 Civil Liberties: 3 Status: Free Human Rights Overview by Human
Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwide U.S. Library of Congress
- Country Study The most common form of slavery
today is debt bondage or bonded labor. A person enters into debt bondage when
his or her labor is demanded as a way to pay back a loan. In India, for
example, debts running from $14 to $214 are usually incurred for basic
necessities, such as food, medical emergencies, marriage dowries (a
long-standing cultural tradition), or funeral expenses. Taking into account
the outrageous interest rates, often in excess of 60 percent, and the
debtors’ meager wages, these loans are difficult, if not impossible, to
repay. Moreover, inaccurate bookkeeping on the part of the moneylender
ensures that the debtor never pays off the loan. Individuals are then forced
to repay loans by working for the moneylender for the rest of their lives and
often pass the same debt on to their children and grandchildren. Human rights
groups estimate that there are approximately 20 million bonded laborers
throughout the world. India
could lead the fight against human trafficking In a bid to combat the menace, the
U.S. would like to expand its dialogue with India, including its law
enforcement agencies. Talking to The Hindu here, the visiting U.S. Assistant
Attorney-General, R. Alexander Acosta, said that India faced a handicap in
the fight against such crimes due to the lack of a federal law enforcement
agency. During the past three years, the
Vajpayee Government has tried to push the idea. But several States have
expressed doubts that it would usurp the rights of their police
organisations. Lauding the shift in India's
approach to nab the traffickers, rather than the victims, Mr. Acosta hoped
that the trend would continue. The three Ps — prosecution, prevention and
protection — played a crucial role in checking trafficking. Probe
into Iraq trafficking claims Indian press reports said that
Indian nationals in Jordan and Kuwait were recruited for jobs in U.S.
military camps in Iraq as cooks, butchers, laundry workers and handymen. Some of the Indians charge they signed up
through Indian employment companies to work in Kuwait, but ended up in Iraq
working for low pay and were refused permission to leave the country. Pulling
the Rug out from Under Us - A Report on Debt Bondage, Carpet-Marking, and
Child Slavery Ironically, India, the world’s
largest democracy, is also home to more slaves than all the other countries
of the world combined.1
With roughly one billion inhabitants, India supports over 15% of the world’s
population.2
And with more than half of India’s population living below the income poverty
line3,
nearly 40% of the population cannot afford a sufficient diet.4
As inadequate government expenditure on education, health, and welfare
increases the high vulnerability of much of India’s vast population,
exploitation – even enslavement – are everyday realities for many Indians. A recent study by International
Labor Organization (ILO) showed that around 12000 Nepalese women and children
are trafficked every year. They are mostly trafficked across the border to
India for the purpose of prostitution.
Although Nepal has been suffering from this problem for long, there
are still no comprehensive data regarding the actual situation of
trafficking. “An analysis of information from
print media, case studies and surveys on trafficked survivors shows the age
groups, 11-18 years for girls and 6-12 years for boys to be more vulnerable
to trafficking. The percentage of trafficking is the highest among hill
ethnic groups, followed by Brahmin, Chhetri and occupational castes. There is
a great variation in data relating to the educational level of trafficked
persons. Nevertheless various reports show that illiterate persons are more
vulnerable than literate persons are,” states the book. Child
Prostitution in Nepal/India Every year, thousands of Nepalese
girls, some as young as 11 are sent to or procured for brothels in the big
Indian cities, like Bombay or Calcutta. They are often the daughters of
poor farming families, where everyone must help with the family income. Girls
have little or no earning potential, and if they are to marry need
substantial dowries. So, when the middleman arrives in the village, and
promises parents cash in return for taking the girls to work in India, or
perhaps in "the circus", and that they will be fed, housed and
cared for, the offer is hard to resist. In reality, many of these girls
are taken to work in Indian brothels, where new, young girls are much sought
after, and their families may never hear from them again. Anti
Trafficking -Save Our Sisters Movement (SOS) EVERY HOUR, FOUR WOMEN AND GIRLS IN
INDIA ENTER PROSTITUTION, THREE OF THEM AGAINST THEIR WILL - 13-year-old Mira of Nepal was
offered a job as a domestic worker in Mumbai, India. Instead she arrived at a
brothel on Mumbai's Falkland Road, where tens of thousands of young women are
displayed in row after row of zoo-like animal cages. Her father had been
duped into giving her to a trafficker. When she refused to have sex, she was
dragged into a torture chamber in a dark alley used for 'breaking-in' new
girls. She was locked in a narrow, windowless room without food or water. On
the fourth day, one of the madam's goondas (thug) wrestled her to the floor
and banged her head against the concrete until she passed out. When she
awoke, she was naked; a "rattan" cane smeared with pureed red
chilli peppers shoved into her vagina. Later she was raped by the goonda.
Afterwards, she complied with their demands. The madam told Mira that she had
been sold to the brothel for 50,000 rupees (about US$ 1,700), that she had to
work until she paid off her debt. Mira was sold to a client who became her
pimp.' [ Robert I. Freidman, "India's
Shame" Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to AN AIDS
Catastrophe," - The Nation, 8 April 1996 ] India: Freeing
the Small Hands of the Silk Industry TINY HANDS AT WORK - In the glow of apparent
prosperity, what went unnoticed for the most part were tiny hands that pulled,
twisted and separated the yarn, so the fiber could become strong enough for
weaving into cloth -- tiny hands that often bled from cuts and sometimes
suffered permanent damage at the unrelenting machines in front of them. They
belonged to children as young as 6 or 8, who stood all day on tired feet,
laboring away at the twisting machines. These children worked in the midst
of ear-splitting noise all day long, in many cases for up to 14 hours a day.
Those were the average working conditions for the children of Magadi. No one
in their town had heard of children’s rights, let alone of the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child. Every year, an average of 22,480
women and 44,476 children are reported missing in India. Out of these, every
year, an average of 5,452 women and 11,008 children are not traced. A recent
report, Action Research on Trafficking in Women and Children in India -
2002-2003 indicates that many of the missing persons are not really missing
but are instead trafficked. Take the story of Parvathi
Vinayak, a young girl in Maharashtra who was reported missing. She was abused
and sexually exploited in a beer bar, according to the report. Even when it
was confirmed that PV had been trafficked, the police records still had her
name listed in the 'missing' list. Similarly, Suhasini Lakshmi, a Class 9
student in Karnataka, was brought to Mumbai by her neighbour for a job. While
her parents complained to the police that she was missing, SL was sold to a
brothel-owner in Mumbai and was rescued after 20 days when the brothel was
raided by the police.
- htcp BEATEN UP - For 11-year-old Mansoor, life
was hellish. "I used to work 15
hours a day and earn about 20 rupees (less than $0.5) per week," he
said. Mansoor, who is from Muzaffarpur
district in Bihar, said he used sleep hungry in a small dingy room on most
days after work. He has been working for the past nine months. "My parents came into contact with a
middleman who had promised good money for working in Delhi," he said. SOLD THREE TIMES - Narayani, in her 50s, said she
had been sold three times during the last three decades by her
employers. "I was working with my
husband and three children in the northern state of Haryana in a factory, and
all that we used to get as salary was food," said Narayani. FOREWORD - Every year, millions of Asian
men, women, and even children, venture to new pastures—from the village to
the city and sometimes to another country. They are driven by poverty, social
exclusion or civil unrest. Their goal is to survive and earn money for their
families. For many—disproportionately women and children—these journeys end
tragically, as they fall into the hands of traffickers. CHILD "CARPET SLAVES" IN
INDIA - Kidnapped
from their villages when they are as young as five years old, between 200,000
and 300,000 children are held captive in locked rooms and forced to weave on
looms for food. In India—as well in other countries—the issue of slavery is
exacerbated by a rigid caste system. SUMMARY - This paper describes the gross and continuing violation of the rights of millions of people in India, Pakistan and Nepal1, who are trapped in debt bondage and forced to work to repay loans. Their designation as persons belonging outside the Hindu caste system is a major determining factor of their enslavement. Evidence from all three countries shows that the vast majority (80%-98%) of bonded labourers are from communities designated as “untouchable”, to whom certain occupations | |
