User:Sampriti.Saxena/Child trafficking in India

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India has a very high volume of child trafficking. There have been many cases where children disappear overnight. As many as one child disappears every eight minutes, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. In some cases, children are taken from their homes to be bought and sold in the market. In other cases, children are tricked into the hands of traffickers by being presented an opportunity for a job, when in reality, upon arrival they become enslaved. In India, there are many children trafficked for various reasons such as labour, begging, and sexual exploitation. Because of the nature of this crime; it is hard to track; and due to the poor enforcement of laws, it is difficult to prevent. Because of this, it is impossible to have exact figures regarding this issue ( Due to the nature of this crime, it is only possible to have estimates of figures regarding the issue). India is a prime area for child trafficking to occur, as many of those trafficked are from, travel through or destined to go to India. Though most of the trafficking occurs within the country, there is also a significant number of children trafficked from Nepal and Bangladesh. There are many different causes that lead to child trafficking, with the primary reasons being poverty and weak law enforcement. The traffickers that take advantage of children can be from another area in India, or could even know the child personally. Children who return home after being trafficked often face shame in their communities, rather than being welcomed home.

Types (Forms)
Types ( forms) of child trafficking include, but are not limited to: involuntary domestic servitude, forced child labor, illegal activities, child soldiers, and children exploited for commercial sex.

Involuntary Domestic Servitude
Children are very vulnerable when it comes to domestic servitude. Often children are told that they will be offered excellent wages to work as a domestic helper in middle-class homes, but they usually end up being severely underpaid, abused, and sometimes sexually assaulted. This particular type of trafficking is hard to detect because it takes place inside private homes where there is no public enforcement. Every year hundreds of thousands of girls are trafficked from rural India to work as domestic helpers in the urban areas.

Forced Child Labor
Legally, children in India are allowed to do light work, but they are often trafficked for bonded labour and domestic work, and are worked far beyond what is allowed in the country. Children are also forced to work as bonded labourers in brick and stone quarries to pay off family debts owed to moneylenders and employers. They are often forced to work in the use of contraptions that bound them to be unable to escape and then forced to submit to control. Others may be bound by abuse whether physical, emotional, or sexual. Children from India's rural areas migrate or are trafficked for employment in industries, such as spinning mills, cottonseed production, manual work, domestic work in family homes, stone quarrying, brick kilns and tea gardens amongst others, where they are forced to work in hazardous environments for little or no pay. Those forced into labor loose all freedom, being thrown into the workforce, essentially becoming slaves, and losing their childhood.

Illegal activities
Children, over adults are often chosen to be trafficked for illegal activities such as begging and organ trade, as they are seen as more vulnerable. Not only are these children being forced to beg for money, but a significant number of those on the streets have had limbs forcibly amputated, or even acid poured into their eyes to blind them by gang masters. Those who are injured tend to make more money, which is why they are often abused in this way. Organ trade is also common, when traffickers trick or force children to give up an organ.

UNICEF estimates that more than 300,000 children under 18 are currently being exploited in more than 30 armed conflicts worldwide. While the majority of child soldiers are between the ages of 15 and 18, some are as young as 7 or 8 years of age. A large number of children are abducted to use as soldiers. Others are used to serve as porters, cooks, guards, servants, messengers, or spies. Many of these young soldiers are sexually abused which often ends with unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. Some children have been forced to commit atrocities against their families and communities. Reports indicate that children were coerced by anti government naxalites to join children's units (“Bal Dasta”), where they were trained and used as couriers and informants, to plant improvised explosive devices and in front-line operations against national security forces.

Children Exploited for Commercial Sex
Sexual exploitation is an issue that faces many developing and developed countries. The United States of America has the largest trade in child porn in the world, and is defined as “the sexual abuse of children and youth through the exchange of sex or sexual acts for drugs, food, shelter, protection, other basics of life, and/or money”. Children that are exploited for commercial sex are subject to transactions for child pornography and child prostitution. The Commercial Sexual Exploitation (CSE) of women and children generates approximately 400 million US Dollars annually in the city of Mumbai alone. Although it is hard to find accurate numbers for exactly how many children are trafficked, studies and surveys sponsored by the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) estimates that there are about three million prostitutes in the country, of which an estimated 40 percent are children, as there is a growing demand for very young girls to be inducted into prostitution on account of customer preferences. There are many severe consequences these children face from being sexually exploited.

Causes (used to be reasons)
The root causes of child trafficking in India are: poverty, a lack of education, and the need to financially support their family. The unemployment rate in India is very high with the UNDP estimating it to be 3.5%. In addition to this, there are not that many financial opportunities. When children are offered work they are likely to be exploited. Children in poverty are often forced to trade sex for a place to live or food to eat. In order to get out of poverty or to pay off debts, some parents have even sold (been forced to sell) their children to traffickers. Children are often trafficked by gangs and forced to beg on the streets.

Education
A lack of access to quality education and low levels of literacy lead to increased occurrences of child trafficking in India (cite MH paper here instead potentially). (Figure out how to cite report book) This issue poses a multilayered threat, as its repercussions are experienced by many different stakeholders and function in interconnected ways. For the child, a lack of access to education severely limits their future opportunities, and can be linked to feelings of increased vulnerability, low self-esteem, and a lack of awareness of their rights. The absence of an effective public education system, and a lack of financial security also create an opportunity cost for school age children between finding employment in unskilled labour sectors (such as construction and domestic help) or pursuing an education. A lack of education and financial security can lead to a devaluing of education in the face of increasing costs of survival from the parents' perspectives. This is especially true for girl children, as they are not traditionally considered an asset to the family they are born into. As such, when weighing the costs of educating a daughter against other costs to the family, the daughter's education if often forgone. Since the benefits of an education are more evident further in the future, their present value is calculated to be quite low when valued against the other uses of limited funds in the present. This trend is further exacerbated by the lack of economic opportunities available to underprivileged and marginalised communities in India. This lack of opportunity is exploited by traffickers who often sell parents and children alike on the promise of steady, high paying employment to lure them away from their homes.

*This will all be cited from the child trafficking book (CBAT).

Additional Causes
In addition to institutional challenges in India, traditional religious and cultural practices also pose a threat to vulnerable children. In some parts of India, for example, young girls are forced into the system of Devadasi where they're "forced into a lifetime of ritual sex slavery" and given to an elder of the village to be their concubine. Child marriage is also one of the leading causes of child trafficking. (cite CBAT book) A lot of children have also been trafficked due to the demand by tourists. People will travel from countries where there are strict enforcements around child trafficking, as well as it being heavily frowned upon and socially unaccepted, to India to find child prostitutes.

Prevalence
Child trafficking is an issue that is extremely prevalent in India, and is continuing to grow rapidly. The trafficking of young girls (under the age of 18) has grown 14 times over the last decade and has grown by 65% in the year 2014 according to the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB). There have been numerous reports about the increase of trafficking taking place across India. According to the US State Department, there are approximately 600,000 to 820,000 people trafficked a year across international borders, and up to 50% of those are children. This is definitely seen as a growing issue in Asia, with the many children that are and continue to be trafficked and exploited for many reasons. In India specifically, it is estimated that there are around 135,000 children trafficked each year.

In 2005, a study was conducted by the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC) after they received an alarming number of reports from the press, police, and non-government organisations (NGOs) about the rise of human trafficking within India. They found that India was fast becoming a source, transit point and destination for traffickers of women and children for sexual and non-sexual purposes. This finding has only increased since being recognised in 2005, and is becoming a very large problem. Almost 20,000 children and women were subjected to human trafficking in 2016. This is nearly a 25% rise from 2015. The areas of the greatest concern were poverty stricken areas such as Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Orissa and West Bengal. The state within India which has the most child trafficking is Assam, holding 38% of the nation's cases. While the issue of child trafficking is higher in some specific parts of India, it is a widespread problem all over the nation. It is difficult to find exact numbers on the issue of child trafficking due to the fact that it is illegal, so the process is very secretive. From the information that is known, there is a very clear increase, not only over the past decade, but also from year to year. This is extremely concerning and the data seems to point to the assumption that it will continue to rise.

Figures in India

 * In 1998, between 5,000 and 7,000 Nepalese girls, some barely 9–10 years old were trafficked into the red light districts in Indian cities. More than 250,000 Nepalese women and girls were already in Indian brothels at the time.
 * According to UNICEF, 12.6 million children are engaged in hazardous occupations.
 * In 2009, it was estimated that 1.2 million children were trafficked worldwide for sexual exploitation, including for prostitution or the production of sexually abusive images.
 * Only 10% of human trafficking in India is international, while 90% is interstate.
 * According to a report by the National Human Rights Commission of India, 40,000 children are abducted each year, leaving 11,000 untraced.
 * NGO's estimate that between 12,000 and 50,000 women and children are trafficked into the country annually from neighbouring nations as a part of the sex trade.
 * There are an estimated 300,000 child beggars in India.
 * Every year, 44,000 children fall into the clutches of gangs.
 * In 2015, only 4,203 human trafficking cases were investigated in India.
 * In 2014, 76% of all people trafficked in India were women and girls.
 * Children make up roughly 40% of prostitutes.
 * It is estimated that over 2 million women and children are trafficked for sex into the red-light districts in India.
 * The Indian Government estimates that girls make up the majority of children in sex trafficking.
 * According to the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) reports from 2009, there are an estimated 1.2 million children involved in prostitution in India.

Actions Against Trafficking
Brief introduction (with some background on both the actors involved)

Indian Government's Response (here I want to talk more about the schemes they've started offering)
India is viewed as a hub for human trafficking, however the issue is of low priority for Indian Government. The Immoral Traffic Prevention Act was first amended in 1956. The act was created to prevent trafficking and sexual exploitation of women and children but the Act does not provide a clear definition of "'trafficking'". In 2003, India enforced the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, which includes three protocols, specifically the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. The protocol "provides an agreed upon definition of trafficking in persons. It aims at comprehensively addressing trafficking in persons through the so-called three P's - Prosecution of perpetrators, Protection of victims and Prevention of trafficking." The protocol defines trafficking as "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of 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. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or service, slavery or practice similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organ."

* Update this section with information from the most recent UNODC report.

Legal Response to Child Trafficking
On the international stage, intergovernmental organisations have been introducing measures to mitigate child trafficking since the early 1900s with varying degrees of success. Some of their more notable measures include the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 by the United Nations, and the adoption of the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children in 2000. On a national level, Articles 23 and 24 of the Constitution of India explicitly ban human trafficking and child labour for children under the age of fourteen. (continue from here talking about IPC, PITA/SITA, 2013 amendment and 2016 one if relevant).

Non Governmental Response
Talk about the Bal Ashram and their work. Look into other NGOs and international orgs doing work in this space in India. (Also potentially mention shifting cultural norms that the Alipertis bring up in their chapter.)

Challenge of Independent Child Migration (needs better heading)
The existing legal system around child trafficking in India pushes independent child migrants into a legal grey area. Children are required to remain in school until the age of 14 years, after which point they may choose to no longer receive an education. On the other hand, laws against child labour prevent children between the ages of 14 to 18 from seeking formal employment in a number of industries that are considered hazardous. This often compels children to seek labour opportunities in informal sectors, such as domestic work and handicrafts where they face an increased risk of exploitation and abuse. This issue is further exacerbated by the lack of employment opportunities in rural areas, where a large proportion of children seeking employment can be found. When these children migrate to urban centres in the company of older family members or friends, law enforcement officials often consider them to be victims of child trafficking. The older guide is charged with trafficking, while the child is usually placed in a shelter or returned to their home. The laws currently in effect do not account for the possibility of consent in cases of child trafficking. This limitation is detrimental to independent child migrants who are then forced to depend on trafficking agents for passage to cities or are forced to make the dangerous journey alone.

(Go on to talk a bit about what policy ideas they present as solutions).