Access To Justice For The Victims Of Trafficking And Prostitution

What is Human Trafficking?

Human trafficking is a crime and a human rights violation. It involves the recruitment and exploitation of a person. The initial consent by a person will be irrelevant if it was obtained by means of fraud or coercion. A child cannot consent to being trafficked. Transporting a child into exploitative conditions constitutes trafficking. It is the trade in and exploitation of human beings for profit. Trafficking in persons should be understood as a process rather than as a single offence.

Trafficking need not involve crossing of borders – it can occur within a country. The UN Palermo Protocol (2000) provides a detailed definition of human trafficking which UN member states have agreed to, making a coordinated international response easier and more effective.

Different Forms of Human Trafficking:

1.Sexual exploitation                                                                                                                                                            2.Forced labor                                                                                                                                                          3.Sale of human organs

Today’s modern days slavery it is very difficult to be exact about numbers, because of the clandestine nature of human trafficking. An estimated 27 million people are trafficked globally each year, with women and girls accounting for 75% of victims. In the EU, 76% of victims are trafficked for sexual exploitation. This form of trafficking makes almost $100 billion each year for traffickers globally.

Legislation

Criminal Law (Human Trafficking) Act 2008 It is illegal for any person to benefit from the prostitution of another person, or to knowingly buy sex from a trafficked person. Penalties of up to life imprisonment apply in respect of these offences. When there is sufficient evidence that a woman has been trafficked, 60 days for reflection and recovery are given by the state and during this time the person is provided accommodation by the state. Extension of time depends on cooperation with the police. A conviction depends on the person testifying in court in front of her alleged trafficker.

HOW DOES OUT LAW TACKLES WITH THESE PROBLEMS

Hman Beings or Persons is prohibited under the Constitution of India under Article 23 (1) The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956 (ITPA) is the premier legislation for prevention of trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation.

Criminal Law (amendment) Act 2013 has come into force wherein Section 370 of the Indian Penal Code has been substituted with Section 370 and 370A IPC which provide for comprehensive measures to counter the menace of human trafficking including trafficking of children for exploitation in any form including physical exploitation or any form of sexual exploitation, slavery, servitude, or the forced removal of organs.

Protection of Children from Sexual offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, which has come into effect from 14th November, 2012 is a special law to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation. It provides precise definitions for different forms of sexual abuse, including penetrative and non-penetrative sexual assault, sexual harassment.

There are other specific legislations enacted relating to trafficking in women and children Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, Bonded Labor System (Abolition) Act, 1976, Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994, apart from specific Sections in the IPC, e.g. Sections 372 and 373 dealing with selling and buying of girls for prostitution.

State Governments have also enacted specific legislations to deal with the issue. (e.g. The Punjab Prevention of Human Smuggling Act, 2012).

What are the measures taken by Government of India to Prevent and Combat Human Trafficking?

With a view to tackle the menace of human trafficking, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India has undertaken number of measures such as:

Administrative measures and interventions

Anti-Trafficking Cell (ATC): Anti-Trafficking Nodal Cell was set up in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) (CS Division in 2006 to act as a focal point for communicating various decisions and follow up on action taken by the State Governments to combat the crime of Human Trafficking. MHA conducts coordination meetings with the Nodal Officers of Anti Human Trafficking Units nominated in all States/UTs periodically.

Advisories: To improve the effectiveness in tackling the crime of human trafficking and to increase the responsiveness of the law enforcement machinery, MHA has issued following comprehensive advisories to all States/UTs:

1.Advisory for preventing crime of human trafficking date 9.9.2009.

2.Advisory on crime against children dated 14th July, 2010.

3.Advisory on missing children dated 31st January, 2012.

4.Advisory on Preventing and Combating cyber crime against children dated 4.1.2012.

5.Advisory on Human Trafficking as Organized Crime dated 30th April, 2012.

6.Advisory on Preventing and combating human trafficking in India-dealing with foreign nationals dated 1.5.2012.

7.SOP to handle trafficking of children for child labor dated 12.8.2013.

8.Advisory on MHA Web Portal on Anti Human Trafficking dated 5.5.2014.

 9.Advisory dated 23.7.2015 for associating SSB and BSF in crime meetings.

These advisories/SOP are available on MHA's Web Portal on Anti Human Trafficking at www.stophumantrafficking-mha.nic.in

Ministry of Home Affairs' scheme: Ministry of Home Affairs under a Comprehensive Scheme Strengthening law enforcement response in India against Trafficking in Persons through Training and Capacity Building, has released fund for establishment of Anti Human Trafficking Units for 270 districts of the country.

Strengthening the capacity building: To enhance the capacity building of law enforcement agencies and generate awareness among them, various Training of Trainers (TOT) workshops on Combating Trafficking in Human Beings for Police officers and for Prosecutors at Regional level, State level and District level were held throughout the country.

Judicial Colloquium: To train and sensitize the trial court judicial officers, Judicial Colloquium on human trafficking are held at the High court level. The aim is to sensitize the judicial officers about the various issues concerning human trafficking and to ensure speedy court process. So far, eleven Judicial Colloquiums have been held at Chandigarh, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha.

FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO HUMAN TRAFFICKING

 Poverty: More than 42% of the Indian people are economically deprived. Most of these people live in poor villages. Some parents though obviously not most feel compelled to send their children to work in order to ease their poverty. In Indian culture, parents generally value their sons over their daughters. One of the main reasons for this, according to Indian culture, is that sons are the ones who will carry on the family name. girls are more expensive because of the dowry system. Whenever parents get the opportunity to send their daughters for child labor, many are willing to so. Most of them end up in brothels or some kind of sexual slavery in India.

2. Lack of education: Many Indian villages do not have schools. The schools that do exist have very poor education system and as the salaries are so low that’s why no teacher wills to come and teach there. And as a result, there the people tends not to go for study and children have no education, this creates an environment ripe for traffickers to make false promise to parents, luring them to send their girls away for a chance at better education, domestic work, and other “good” opportunities that would otherwise be unattainable in their lifetimes.

3. Caste System: Indian still functions with the caste system. The lower caste, which contain the majority of the population, have less opportunity for advancement that those in higher castes. The lower castes are vulnerable to all kinds of exploitation in Indian society. The upper caste intimidate, manipulate, and coerce lower caste girls for sexual pleasure.

4. City life Dreams: for the village people, the city represents a dream of a better life. When traffickers offer their daughter a job in the city the rest of the family can move to the city.

CAUSES OF PROSTITUTION

1. ill treatment by parents

2. bad company

3. family prostitution

4. social custom.

5. inability to arrange marriage

6. lack of sex education, media

7. prior incest and rape.

8. early marriage and desertion

9. lack of recreational facilities, ignorance and acceptance of prostitution

10. economic causes include poverty and economic distress

11. psychological causes include desire for physical pleasure. Greed, and dejection.

STATISTICS

All over the globe human trafficking is the third largest organized crime after the arms trade and drugs dealing. According to the reports 80% of the human trafficking across the globe is done for sexual exploitation and the rest of is bonded labor and India is presented is the hub of this crime in Asia. In India in every eight minutes a child went missing. In 2011 35,000 children were missing and out of this 11,000 were from West Bengal and from its outskirts. And this is assumed that from this analysis 30% of these cases were reported, and the actual number is pretty high. By the article of The Times of India Karnataka has third position in India in Human Trafficking. More than 300 cases were reported in every fourth south Indian states. Whereas 100 such cases were reported in West Bengal and Bihar each year. According to the reports of United Nation Office on Drugs and Crime Tamil Nadu has 528 cases in 2012. The number of these cases is not as much as high as in West Bengal (549). As per Data given by the Home Ministry, 1,379 cases in Karnataka, 2,244 in Andhra Pradesh and 2,157 in Tamil Nadu were reported of Human Trafficking in India. 300 bonded laborers were rescued in Bangalore recently. Whereas Delhi is the hub of Human Trafficking trade in India and half of the world’s slave live in India, in the market of illegal trade Delhi is the hotspot of trade of young girls for domestic labor, prostitution and forced marriage. Even it is the transit point for Human Trafficking.

Fundamental theory behind this increasing number of Human trafficking is demand and supply because people migrate from small cities to commercial cities and from here the demand of commercial sex is becoming high and to fulfill that suppliers manipulate more minor girls towards prostitution. And they also do trading of minor girls for fulfilling the demand from the poor families in northeastern states of India. In these states if you are girl and born in a poor family than there are maximum chances to be sold for bonded labor, forced marriage or for prostitution. A human trafficker can earn 20 times more than what he or she had paid for the girl while purchasing her from her family, even he or she can also sell her to another dealer or buyer for much higher price because now she had been trained fully and her spirit had been broken from inside. Now she can easily tolerate all the pain and the slavery during her bonded labor time period. It is estimated that in India over 1.2 billion population 27 million adults and 13 million children are indulged in the business of human trafficking. A study also tells that a sex slave or worker earns 2,50000rs per year from this prostitution work. Several kinds of disasters happened during past years have remained thousands of homeless people around the country which made the work of the exploiters more easy to exploit people especially children to work with them in the prostitution for fulfilling their basic demand of home, clothes and house. Although human trafficking and prostitution is hidden crime so it is unable to find the exact number of human trafficked and prostitutes over couple of past years. But these statistics are an approximate idea to know that this problem is becoming major day by day from year to year in India and the maximum number of people indulged in this is consist of children.

NON -GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION

This problem is so much effective in Indian society that they effect Human rights and fundamental rights of the children and women which are been trafficked. On the other hand Indian law has provided a scheme “Ujjawala” for the victims of trafficking and prostitution who has been rescued. In 2007 it is launched by Ministry of Women and Child Development to prevent, rescue, rehabilitation, reintegration and repatriation of women and child victims of trafficking and prostitution. Besides this there are some non-governmental organizations working in the field of providing shelter homes, rehabilitation centers and work for them to earn their livelihood. In those non-governmental organization “SANLAAP” and “FREE A GIRL MOVEMENT” are most effective in the regions of Kolkata and Mumbai.

SANLAAP India

“Sanlaap “was founded and registered in 1862 under the Societies Registration Act’1860. They had started a study of a sexually abused girl in the red light areas of Kolkata, south and north 24 paraganas supported by NORAD. First drop in center was established in Landsdowne which was inaugurated by the commissioner of police of that time. They opened first shelter home in 1993 for the victims of trafficking that they can stay there till they cannot afford a new place to live a healthy life. Even a vocational training and income generation program was also started in that year called “Srijoni”. In 1995 by the efforts of sanlaap bagerhat eviction and eviction of women and children was stopped by the court orders and with this great effort they also setup a documentation unit of their which has its existence in present also. They were notified under the Juvenile Justice Act to restore, repatriate and rehabilitate the victims of the trafficking with the educational support. Mental Health Intervention Program was structured for the improvement of the trafficked persons and with this legal assistance was also provided by the Legal Aid Department. In 1998 sanlaap was given opportunity to initiate the Child Development Scheme Program in the red light areas and a child protection unit was also set up by them in Madhusudanpur, 24 parganas south. SANVED was a platform provided by sanlaap to show the art ability and to provide advocacy to the victims in 2000. In 2004 they started working with 27 community based organizations in 9 districts of West Bengal as a part of campaign program. SAMVAV was set up for the young adults from different types of red light areas. Sanlaap also started to involve youth volunteers from different countries to take part in their schemes and programs. They also get success in 2005 in establishing Child protection program in 9 districts of West Bengal and successfully they have 87 CP units out reaching to a number of 2,700 children who are vulnerable to trafficking and CSEC. Through this successful development under the economic reintegration program for the survivors of trafficking they have signed MOU’s with different kind of corporate houses and nationalized banks. And because of this step many of the survivors get the option of livelihood and substantial earning. SANLAAP established their second training manual with the support of UNDP to cover the issues like migration, gender, sex, HIV/Aids and trafficking. They also organized training centers where they give training for police training academy, judges training college, the border security force and for ICDS anganwadi workers and CDPO. 100 youth members have been trained till now as peer supporters and youth advocates by sanlaap. In 2006 SANLAAP started their first formal school in October. They also had a unique venture and first of its kind globally. On child trafficking and protection issues 614 police officers were trained from the districts of Kolkata and Darjeeling. Three transit homes have been setup by SANLAAP in partnership with the district based partner organizations in south 24 paraganas, Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri for vulnerable girl children with support provided by sanlaap. Maharashtra Government had collaborated with sanlaap under the executive directorship of Mrs. Indrani Sinha and their other members to prepare “STATE PLAN OF ACTION” on trafficking in Maharashtra. In 2007 SANLAAP intervened for the very first time in the ditrict of Midnapore, West Bengal and districts of nawada and vaishali in Bihar thus addressing a unique kind of vulnerabilities of with specific focus of girl child trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation and domestic work. In these districts the number of missing child was 310 as tracked by sanlaap’s partner organization. They also launched Care and Protection Advocacy Initiative in Bihar and there 100 participants were also gathered to discuss the existing services of care and protection for the victims of trafficking in the state of Bihar.

SCHOOL FOR JUSTICE

Their most appreciative movement was to give a proper platforms to the victims who had rescued from the brothels to lead the way in changing the system. In this programme they education, training and support to girls to become lawyers and work within the Indian Judicial System. Because they think this is the only way from which these girls can be the driving force themselves in putting their offenders behind the bars and ensuring that justice can be served. They give an opportunity to girls to lead better future through the way of good education system at high end universities. It is a crowd-funded and this gives members of the public an opportunity to support the girls in their education in whatever small way that they can. They tell public not to turn a blind eye towards child prostitution and instead becomes part of the solution in eliminating it. The School for Justice collaborates closely with local women’s and other grassroots partner organization fighting child prostitution as well as law firms and a reputable university with an accredited law degree programme.

CONCLUSION

This writting contains all those details which will help everyone to know that what is trafficking and how every single child, woman and man are in so much of risk because of all these activities. And due to the this it leads to prostitution. This paper contains all the national and international organization governmental and non-governmental organization which helps all the victims of trafficking and prostitution who wants to come out of these problems and seeks justice for themselves and during this research work it was been found that the organization they even support the victims to be economically stable and provide them with education so that they can lead a normal life all other citizens of India and other countries. This whole research work has been done with proper information and informative enough to give every single citizen that to help these victims treat them like family to give them comfort to overcome those harsh time and lead a normal life. In this research, it’s has also been found that the organizations they provide the victims to with advocates to file their cases and seek for justice. It is our responsibility to give them a place to live in forgetting those harsh time. And its our governments time to make sure everyone is been given justice and we have make sure every kid is been given education so that the reasons behind these trafficking is been stopped and no girl be treated as a burden in their family or no kid should be trafficked for money. Neither should we promote this wrong ways to the women to take prostitution to earn money rather we should give them chance to earn money in such a way that they  earn money with pride.