More than eight million children go missing worldwide every year. In India, every hour, 11 children go missing and seven never return home. They do not just disappear into thin air, they end up becoming slaves. Two months ago, the mass abduction of 276 Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram dominated international headlines and became the stuff of nightmares when the leader of the militant group announced his plans to sell them. Caught between power and greed, he invoked the motivation behind a borderless, organised crime industry worth billion dollars — human trafficking.
It is systematic. It is global. And it is rampant in India.
From 2005 till now, 300,000 Indian women and 64,000 girls have been abducted, largely from the country’s poverty-stricken districts. Rape, acid attacks, dowry deaths ... India is relentless in hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons. But the world’s attention is rarely drawn to the true terror of human trafficking in India, regardless of the country being a source, destination and transit point for men, women and children subjected to forced labour, commercial and sexual exploitation, illegal adoption and organ trade among others. Five years ago, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation had estimated that about 90 per cent of trafficking took place within the country and that there were some three million sex workers, of which about 40 per cent were girls as young as 10.
According to New Delhi-based child rights organisation, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, from 2005 to 2012, every year, there was a 23.2 per cent increase in the rate of girl child kidnappings.
The scale of these crimes is staggering.
While the gruesome practice of enslavement and perversion go on with alarming frequency in India, it got away with murder, literally, when the US blacklisted Thailand, Malaysia and Venezuela for failing to meet the minimum standards in fighting human trafficking last week. Unlike 2010, when the US had pinned down India, this year, it is not even on the watch list of the annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report. Did things dramatically change for the better in four years? Not really. Because statistics tell a different story.
Abduction of women increased by 11.73 per cent every year, number of girl child kidnappings soared 23.2 per cent and minor girls accounted for almost 85 per cent of all kidnappings in the country, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. The enormity of human trafficking in India — an illicit business generating annual profits of $150 billion (Dh551.7 billion) — is “one hundred times” more than Thailand and Malaysia put together, according to senior advocate of the Supreme Court of India, Colin Gonsalves, who is also the founder of Human Rights Law Network (HRLN).
Letting go of India, which wears a “garb of democracy”, according to Gonsalves, in a way has significantly exacerbate the problem, with a large number of women and girls from Nepal, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Afghanistan also being subjected to sex trafficking in India. There are also increasing reports of women and girls being sold or coerced into marriages in states with dwindling female-to-male gender ratios, including Haryana and Punjab, some of whom are subsequently forced into prostitution.
Human rights activists, working in the field, often say that prosecutors and police collude with traffickers, who are becoming increasingly better organised, so they hardly get caught and convicted.
Most disquieting is how laws in the country are used against trafficking victims. Time and again, trafficking victims are charged and sometimes jailed for prostitution or using false papers. The law enforcement system is so deplorable when it comes to prosecuting traffickers that it is the rare case that makes it to a conviction. Often, a rescued victim is repeatedly deposed and continually asked embarrassing questions in an attempt to get her to withdraw the charges.
Laws are changing and some judicial and police practices are improving, but the pace is slow and incommensurate with the scale of the crimes.
Last year, after drawing much flak from the National Human Rights Commission and other international organisations, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government amended the penal code, broadening the types of crimes considered as trafficking and establishing more stringent sentences. It established Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs), which were made responsible for combining law enforcement and rehabilitation efforts. However, it was a case of too little, too late. For those children, who have already become statistics on the long lists, these measures were not of any help. Most of AHTUs proved to be ineffective, run in uncoordinated and piecemeal fashion, providing no information on investigations or prosecution of trafficking offences.
What needs to be done on an urgent basis is not just signing and ratifying the international conventions and protocols, but redefining and reworking victim protection so that those who have been rescued can be empowered though training and skill development. Along with an integrated plan of action for better policing and protection mechanism for cross-border trafficking, setting up of fast track courts and a code of conduct for the police and judiciary to deal with trafficking survivors is also of critical importance.
Despite being hidden in plain sight, running into the cracks and crevices of civil society, this epidemic is real and tangible. The Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government must not get blinded by its development agendas and wake up to the scourge and do something — anything and everything — to adopt a zero tolerance for human trafficking.
After all, it is a human rights issue for the 21st Century.
Suparna Dutt D’Cunha is a freelance journalist based in India.
