HUMAN TRAFFICKING FUELS VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
Dr. P.Sreevani
1. In-Charge Dept. of Botany and UG Biotechnology, Dr. V. S. Krishna Govt. Degree College (A), Visakhapatnam. Ph:9908369522, Email: [email protected]
Abstract
Trafficking in persons is a serious crime, a grave violation of human rights and Trafficking in children is a global phenomenon. It deprives the victim from rights to life, freedom, dignity, and security. Children are being trafficked for many purposes, including sexual exploitation, domestic labour, agricultural and mine work, as well as for sport and for adoption. Even if children are not destined for the sex industry, they are at risk of physical abuse, including sexual abuse.The root cause of trafficking are multiple that include poverty, lack of employment opportunities, low social status of the girl and women, impunity from prosecution, a general lack of education and awareness. Therefore to alleviate and prevent human trafficking, has been raising awareness from the base of community by forming adolescences groups and survivors groups.Pre independence women’s organizations like the All India Women’s conference continue to this day to work with their social objectives, having satisfied themselves that the colonial state that they opposed has ceased to exist. The Tebhaga and Telengana movements never realized their full potential. While some efforts at ‘development’and welfare were made by the successive governments of these areas, the peoples’demands for equity and social justice in these areas continued to be restated in different forms in subsequent decades.
Introduction
Along with prevention program on anti human trafficking, government and non government organisations are working for the protection of trafficking survivors and children those who are in high risk of trafficking. We are providing direct shelter support, health support and case management and providing friendly environment to them to overcome the trauma. The objectives of the Safe Home and Half Way Home is to rehabilitate and support to the service user for the physical, mental and social well being and rehabilitate and empower, to be self sufficient for their independent and dignified lives through counseling, awareness training and different vocational training and job placement so that they can live independent and dignified lives in the society. Safe home is the first step of rehabilitation of the trafficking survivors, the children at the risk of trafficking and the children facing sexual abuse and in the process of trafficking. During their stay in the shelter, they are supported with the available services to heal them physically and mentally and prepared them to feel as they could live a very dignified live in the community(Saktisamuha annual report 2014) After having cured from the problematic stage in the safe home, they will be shifted to Half Way Home, as each shelter has the privilege to keep the beneficiaries within certain timeframe; after they become able to live an independent life or getting support from their family, they move out from the shelter. Similarly, the Emergency Shelter Home has aim to provide protection, support rehabilitation and re-integration of girls who are in high risk of trafficking, sexual abuse, sexual violence; exploitation and emergency support the girls under 18 years. The causes of trafficking and the factors leading to this apparent increase are multiple and complicated. These factors are embedded within the socioeconomic structure of the country and require an in-depth analysis. However, for the present purpose the factors have been categorized into two groups. The ‘push’ factors, the first group: there are the conditions in the environment of the ‘sending’ communities or countries that ensure a supply of people for trafficking. These factors include low employment opportunities, low social status of women, economic and social vulnerability of women and children, urbanization, migration, etc. The second group refers to the set of ‘pull’ factors that support the demand for trafficking activities. These include wage employment and bonded labour, labour migration and prostitution, and cultural myths. All these factors have been explained in this report. Traffickers adopt different strategies and tricks to allure and enroll young children and women (and their families) into the trafficking process. The procurement process for trafficking in women in the sex industry in Bangladesh involves the entrapment of women to be sold to brothels nationally or to neighbouring countries, especially in India. The traffickers at these locations look for migrants who come from rural areas for job or poor young people abandoned by their families; they allure them with false promises of wealth and better prospects. The victims from these spots are usually sold to Bangladeshi brothels. Procurement of victims from villages and towns in the border areas of the country is more frequently associated with the purpose of supplying sex workers for the sex industry of India or Myanmar. Several case studies incorporated in this report explain the trafficking and procurement processes.
The Indian women’s movement after independence and its relationship to the state can be reviewed under the broad categories of developments in the mass organizations with extra feminist political linkages and the ‘autonomous’ women’s movement. At one level it was the ‘autonomous’ groups that led the feminist charge in the country. These groups, organizations, and individual activists were single mindedly devoted to the cause of women were often urban, visible and articulate and focused their attention on demands for gender equity, often following constitutional promises, pushing the legal and constitutional structures to deliver equitable outcomes, campaigning for legal change where the existing legal framework lagged behind constitutional promises. There are many examples of the actions of autonomous women’s groups that come to mind – the demands for changes in penalties and investigation parameters in cases of rape, toning up the legal redressed system in cases of dowry death,, campaigns to take cognizance of domestic violence. More or less by definition many of these demands were made to the state, i.e. the modern and formal state. It is important to highlight this, for while an overt critique of the state seems absent from the activities of these groups, in the theory of their functioning, there seems to be a clear distinction between the modern, constitutional state, and the feudal traditional state that ruled many aspects of the lives of women. Law has indeed been a privileged site of struggle and debate in the contemporary women’s movement, with a wide range of expectations and demands being placed by the women’s movement on the legal system (Mary E. John 2008). However, law and jurisprudence have another face, they are the collective articulation of the state’s accepted doctrine of political economy, in the Indian context the women’s movements initial euphoria about and later abandonment of the demand for an uniform civil code indicates that naiveté about the potential security of the constitutional framework was replaced at a later stage by the recognition of the capacity of the patriarchal and fascist state for damage through legislation (Haksar and Nandita 1999).
Consequences of Trafficking
Trafficking is a violation of human rights, which has various consequences at the level of the individual, family, community, and country. It is a form of exploitation of the weaker members of the society. It can be argued that trafficking is part of a continuum of sexual exploitation that perpetuates and continually reinforces the subordinate status of women (R.Gazl et.al. 2001) Trafficked people work under conditions which are hazardous to their mental and physical health. Nevertheless, there were no specific reports on the health consequences of trafficking, although a number of problems were quoted repeatedly. Perhaps, because of the link between trafficking and the sex industry, the singular most frequently-reported health consequence was the role of trafficking in HIV-associated epidemics. Children and women trafficked for purposes other than commercial sex. For instance, domestic and industrial work may also have an increased risk of HIV infection because of their exposure to instances of forced sex and perhaps also the potential initiation into substance misuse, including contact with intravenous drug users. However, a search for printed documents and a search on Internet for relevant references on this issue were unsuccessful.
Rescue, Rehabilitation, Repatriation, and Reintegration
Rescue is a thorny issue. It has its limitations and unacceptability, largely due to the attitude and violent behaviour of the law-enforcing agencies. Although the police rescue many women and children but what happens to them is largely unknown. Often the rescue processes are violent, aggressive, and ‘male dominated.’ Sometimes the minors are sent either to state-run remand homes or to an NGO shelter. Most are unable to go back to their home because of a whole series of problems, and when they are released, they are again at risk of being picked up by the traffickers. ‘Repatriation’ means voluntary return to the country of origin of the person subjected to trafficking across international frontiers (R. Gazl et. al. 2001). The minors have no choice; they have to be taken back to their place of origin, but an adult woman has the right to choose to stay in the country if she so wishes. The choice of women is not even considered, because the focus has always been to protect the interest of State over and above the interest of women. ‘Reintegration’ means social and economic integration acknowledging her right to self-determination.
Conclusion
Trafficking is a human rights issue with important ramifications in the area of health, law enforcing, and socioeconomic development in general. Poverty, attitude toward women and deeply-entrenched gender discrimination, unemployment, cultural norms about marriage, well-organized national and international networks of traffickers, and weak lawenforcement are the critical factors relating to trafficking of women and children. Several acts, including the Women and Children have provisions for penalties for violence against women and children, including trafficking and kidnapping. Yet, their proper implementation remains a formidable challenge. We observed that many research reports are based on information gathered through anecdotes, and from secondary analysis and unreliable data. But we relied on a few good reports that collected field information describing the trafficking practices and that mapped out the trafficking routes. Although more studies need to be conducted to shed light on trafficking antecedents, there are already several reports documenting the trafficking issues. There is, however, a need for studies which can generate first-hand information on social, economic, political and health implications of the problem. It is critical also to identify the current and potential roles of the government and NGOs in eliminating this immoral practice. Given the regional nature of trafficking and the international implications of this problem, reports on the nature, magnitude, trends, and forms of trafficking in the SAARC countries are needed. The advantage of establishing cross-regional teams and resource centres to help identify the dynamics of trafficking, both from local and regional perspectives, has also been highlighted in reports included in this review of the literature. A uniform plan of action on the issue of trafficking of women and children involving the governments and NGOs of the region needs to be developed, so that a coordinated approach toward the conviction of traffickers is possible. This regional approach implies the development of a legal framework that ensures arrest, conviction, and extradition of traffickers, and that also enables prosecution of traffickers and abusers even when crimes are committed in foreign soil.
Reference
1. RukhsanaGazl, Z.H. Chowddhary, SMN Alam, Elma Chowdhury, f.Ahmad and S.Begum. 2001. Trafficking of women and children in Bangladesh. ICDDR. B. Special Publication no. 111.
2. End the Misery, stop human trafficking. SaktiSamuha Annual Report. 2014. Helambu Quality Printers. 1-58pp
3. Mary E John in the introduction to the secrion on LAW in Womens’ Studies in India : A Reader (Mry E Johmed) Penguin India, 2008.
4. Haksar,Nandita. ‘Human Rights Lawyering: A Feminist Perspective.’ in Engendering Law in India : Essays in honour of LotikaSarkar. (AmitaDhanda and ArchanaParashar eds. Lucknow, Eastern Books, 1999)

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