Dr. Avnish Jolly :Meanwhile, in targeting the Indian government, campaigners also took the international community to task for its failure to match its actions with deeds. The General Assembly is likely to propose improved cooperation on prevention of the crime, protection of the victims, and prosecution of the traffickers — as set forth in the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking In Persons, Especially Women And Children. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the "global epidemic" of human trafficking includes 127 countries as sources of trafficked persons and 137 nations as destinations for those traffic
Despite the reported extent of the trafficking crisis in India, government authorities made uneven efforts to prosecute traffickers and protect trafficking victims, the report said, suggesting that that internal forced labour may constitute India’s largest trafficking problem.
The report said that 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 labour in circus shows. Indian women are trafficked to the Middle East for commercial sexual exploitation, the report said. There are also victims of labour trafficking among the thousands of Indians who migrate willingly every year to the Middle East, Europe and the US to work as domestic servants and low-skilled labourers.
Men and women from Bangladesh and Nepal are trafficked through India for forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation in the Middle East. Indian nationals travel to Nepal and within the country for child sex tourism, the report revealed. In India itself, men, women and children are held in debt bondage and face forced labour working in brick kilns, rice mills, agriculture and embroidery factories.
While no comprehensive study of forced and bonded labour has been completed, NGOs estimate this problem affects 20 to 65 million Indians. The report further said that women and girls are trafficked within the country for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage. Children are subjected to forced labour as factory workers, domestic servants, beggars and agriculture workers, and have been used as armed combatants by some terrorist and insurgent groups.
Describing lack of punishment of traffickers as a critical challenge, the report recommended an expansion of central and state government law enforcement capacity to conduct intrastate law enforcement activities against trafficking. India’s efforts to protect victims of trafficking varied from state to state, but remained inadequate in many places during the year, according to report.
Calling India’s efforts aimed at the prevention of trafficking in persons as inadequate, the report said the government did not report new or significant prevention efforts addressing the prominent domestic problems of trafficking of adults for purposes of forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation. The country also did not report any efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts. Similarly, the government failed to take any steps to raise awareness of trafficking for nationals travelling to known child sex tourism destinations within the country. India has not ratified the 2000 UN Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Protocol, the State Department report said.
Only a multi pronged strategy operationalized through an intensive mainstremed response is likely to work in this extremely pertinent issue.
Best wishes,
Dr.Rajesh Gopal.