The Republic of India is the second most populous country in the world, stretching from the Arabian Sea (W) to the Bay of Bengal (E), bordering Pakistan (W); China, Nepal, and Bhutan (N); Bangladesh (NE); and Myanmar (E). New Delhi is its capital and Bombay (Mumbai) its largest city. An estimated 400 million are children between 0 and 18 years of age. Although acceleration in economic growth has made India among the 10 fastest growing developing countries, the country’s per capita income remains low and 26 per cent of the population live below the income poverty line.
India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. India's trafficking in persons problem is estimated to be in the millions. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) estimates that 90 percent of India's sex trafficking is internal. Women and girls are trafficked internally for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage. Children are subject to involuntary servitude as factory workers, domestic servants, beggars, and agriculture workers. Men, women, and children are held in debt bondage and face involuntary servitude working in brick kilns, rice mills, agriculture, and embroidery factories. India is also a destination for women and girls from Nepal and Bangladesh trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation. Bangladeshi women reportedly are trafficked through India for sexual exploitation in Pakistan. Although Indians migrate willingly to the Gulf for work as domestic servants and low-skilled laborers, some later find themselves in situations of involuntary servitude, including extended working hours, non-payment of wages, restrictions on movement by withholding of passports or confinement to the workplace, and physical or sexual abuse. Bangladeshi and Nepali men and women are trafficked through India for involuntary servitude in the Middle East. - U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2007 [full country report]
CAUTION: The following links have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in India. Some of these links may lead to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false. No attempt has been made to verify their authenticity or to validate their content.
Quick Search for Missing Children - Select Gender, Country (India), and Years Missing
CHILDLINE - Toll Free Call 1098 - Night & Day
CHILDLINE reaches out to all children in need of care and protection such as: street children, child labourers, children who have been abused, child victims of flesh trade, differently-abled children, child addicts, children in conflict with the law, children in institutions, mentally challenged children, HIV/AIDs infected children, children affected by conflict and disaster, child political refugees, children whose families are in crises.
Website to track missing children launched
Anyone who has lost their child can post a message on this website and a search will be set in motion simultaneously in 40 cities in the country. Launched by Don Bosco National Forum for Youth at Risk in association with UNICEF, www.missingchildsearch.net will be closely watched and monitored by child welfare organisations in all major cities in the country and a search will be generated immediately. The Don Bosco National Forum for Youth at Risk is a major partner of Childline India Foundation and extends service to hundreds of children who are victims of war, conflict, natural calamities, sexual exploitation, trafficking and HIV/AIDS. They also take care of street and working children.
U.S. Dept of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs
INCIDENCE AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Bonded or forced child labor is a problem and exists in several industries. Recent reports indicate that the practice exists in carpet manufacturing and silk weaving.
India is a source, destination, and transit country for trafficking of children for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and other forms of exploitive labor. Children are reported to be trafficked from India to the Middle East and Western countries such as the United States and Europe; into India from Bangladesh and Nepal; and through the country to Pakistan and the Middle East. Mumbai, Calcutta and New Delhi are major destination cities for young girls trafficked from Nepal and Bangladesh for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation. Children are also trafficked within India for sexual exploitation and forced or bonded labor. Organized crime and police corruption were common factors that contributed to the overall situation of trafficking in India. An August 2004 study by the government estimated that almost half of the trafficked children interviewed were between the ages of 11 to 14 years.
Bur of Democracy, Human Rights & Labor - Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005
TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS – Within the country, women from economically depressed areas often moved to cities seeking greater economic opportunities, and once there they were often forced by traffickers into prostitution. In many cases, family members sold young girls into prostitution. Extreme poverty, combined with the low social status of women, often resulted in parents handing over their children to strangers for what they believed was employment or marriage. In some instances, parents received payments or the promise that their children would send wages back home.
According to the Indian Center for Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, more than 40 thousand tribal women, mainly from Orissa and Bihar, were forced into economic and sexual exploitation; many came from tribes driven off their land by national park plans. A Haryana-based NGO revealed widespread trafficking of teenaged girls and young boys from poverty-stricken Assam to wealthier Haryana and Punjab for sexual slavery under the pretext of entering into arranged marriages or for forced labor. There was also significant trafficking for real marriages due to decades of large-scale and increasing female feticide.
Boys, often as young as age four were trafficked to the Middle East or the Persian Gulf as jockeys in camel races, and many boys ended up as beggars in Saudi Arabia during Hajj (pilgrimage). The majority of such children worked with the knowledge of their parents, who received $200 (Rs. 9,300) for their child's labor. Many children were kidnapped for forced labor, with kidnappers earning approximately $150 (Rs. seven thousand) per month from the labor of each child. The child's names were usually added to the passport of a Bangladeshi or female citizen who already had a visa for the Gulf. Girls and women were trafficked to the Persian Gulf states to work as domestic workers or for commercial sexual exploitation
Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2004
[74] The Committee welcomes the ratification of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Convention on Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Women and Children for Prostitution; the adoption of a plan of action to combat trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of women and children; the initiative to undertake a study, inter alia, to collect data on the number of children and women who become victims of sexual exploitation and trafficking; and the Pilot Projects to Combat Trafficking of Children for Commercial Sexual Exploitation in Destination and Source Areas, but remains concerned that the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act, 1986 does not define trafficking and limits its scope to sexual exploitation. In addition, the Committee expresses its concern at the increasing number of child victims of sexual exploitation, including prostitution and pornography. Concern is also expressed at the insufficient programs for the physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of child victims of such abuse and exploitation.
State unaware of child abuse situation, projecting deflated figues
The pilgrim town of Puri is a haven for child prostitution and rampant paedophilia. A recent study conducted by the Institute of Socio Economic Development with support from United Nations Development Fund for Women says that Puri is the heart of child trafficking and accounts for over 43 percent of the cases.
But the State Administration and Police make no attempt to move because the holy town also happens to be a tourist hotspot.
But the real cause of concern lies elsewhere. Domestic abuse continues unabated and even in the face of newer and stringent legislation. Having children as domestic helps is a common practice and they are the major victims of abuse.
The sensational incident of child torture by royals of Khariar in 2004 had amply revealed the magnitude of the problem. The Crime Branch of Orissa Police arrested the former royal BP Singh Deo and his wife Pushpalata Singh Deo who allegedly branded their 8-year-old domestic help.
The new and stringent legislation has not been able to rein in the menace. Children are not only afraid of reporting the abuse in fear of retribution, loss of livelihood also deters them to disclose.
UN GIFT - Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking
At the grass roots where the problem is most acute, non-governmental organizations and other civil society groups play a key role. They are the eyes and ears of the global community, and are in the front line of the anti-trafficking movement, protecting victims and helping the survivors. A number of private individuals, either through foundations, the media or on their own initiative, are champions of the anti-trafficking cause. Their work, either to raise global awareness or to tackle local problems, is an inspiration to us all. If these various initiatives at different levels and in different parts of the world could unite, the chances of ending human trafficking would increase significantly.
Therefore, the initiative aims to harness and synergize these efforts, get others to join them, and set in motion a broad-based global movement that will attract the political will and resources needed to stop human trafficking. UNODC is the facilitator of the process, channeling existing efforts into a cohesive framework rather than re-inventing the wheel.
It is time to join forces to end human trafficking. This is a global problem that requires a global solution. The Global Initiative creates a common banner under which we can all rally.
How to change the world - The role of the social entreprenuer
As Childline expanded to new cities, the call-tracking system also emerged as an important source of child protection information. National data showed that the biggest killer of street children was tuberculosis, but regional call patterns revealed a variety of local problems. In Jaipur, for example, childline received reports of abuse in the garment and jewelry industries. In Varanasi, there were reports of children being abducted to work in the sari industry. In Delhi, many calls came from middle-class children. In Nagpur, a transit hub, there were frequent reports of children abandoned in train stations. In Goa, a beach resort, a major problem was the sexual abuse of children by foreign tourists.
Panel Draws Attention to Human Trafficking
Thirty families living in a village in the Tiruvallur district of India all have one thing in common: They are now free after spending years in bonded labor at a nearby brick kiln, said Gayatri Patel, who visited the village in 2006.
"The people I met with told me the owner of the brick kiln who had practically enslaved these people had been arrested, but he was only sentenced to one night in prison," Patel recently told a Georgetown audience. "The next morning when he left, he just went back to his brick kiln, rounded up another 100 bonded laborers and put them to work."
NGO worker involved in human trafficking arrested
Arrest of an activist working for a non-government organisation (NGO) for his alleged involvement in human trafficking of 13 Nepalese women in Maharajganj district on Thursday has put a question mark over the very genuineness of such agencies involved in the eradication of the menace. This worker, arrested along with a policeman, was working for the NGO Manav Sewa Sansthan.
March denounces child trafficking
LURED BY SWEETS - Kailash Satyarthi, chairman of the Global March Against Child Labour, says South Asia is a major source, destination and transit area for child trafficking of all forms. “Children are being taken for forced labour and bonded labour," he says.
"Children are being used for child marriages. Child prostitution is of course there, then a lot of children are taken as camel jockeys." Thousands of children work in roadside food stalls
Some children, he says, are kidnapped and sold so their organs can be harvested for transplant operations.
One of the young marchers is a boy of 13 who says he was lured from his village in Bihar by a man with sweets, kidnapped, and taken to Punjab where he was made to work 12 hours a day, every day.
Human trafficking is a $32 bn worldwide business
Afsana Khatun, a 15-year-old Muslim girl from Kolkata's Kidderpore area, has never met 13-year-old Rakesh who works for 18 hours in a Punjab village like a slave after he was trafficked from his native village in Bihar. But on Sunday, Afsana will march with thousands of others from Kolkata so that Rakesh and other boys and girls of his age who are trafficked every day are not enslaved in a stone quarry or a red light area forever.
'The objective of this march is to build a mass movement against child trafficking and forced labour. There is no regional protocol to prohibit trafficking. We would march to make the government answerable and people aware,' he said.
Four held for human trafficking; three girls rescued
Three young women aged 18 to 20 years were rescued from being trafficked and four persons arrested in this connection here on Tuesday, police said. The girls belonging to Vijayawada city were lured on the promise of jobs in Hyderabad.
Child Trafficking
TRAFFICKING AND CHILD MARRIAGE - Due to a demographic imbalance in Haryana (850 girls/1000 boys), men find it difficult to find a bride. The easy way out has been through a network of touts who help men, young old and widowed men to find wives from West Bengal, Assam and Bihar. An estimated 5000 girls were sold in the Mewat region of Haryana.
Of Serious Concern
Incidents of human trafficking are on the rise in the country despite the presence of a number of organisations, both in the private and government sectors, and the powerful media that makes each incident of human trafficking public. The latest case of human trafficking was revealed in Nepalgunj the other day when a suspected trafficker was arrested while trying to traffic four boys and five girls across the border. Thanks to Maiti Nepal, an NGO working for the well-being of helpless girls, the police arrested the suspected trafficker. Though there is no official record regarding the number of Nepalese girls trafficked to Indian brothels, thousands of Nepalese girls are said to live lives of untold misery in the Indian brothels.
Four arrested for human trafficking1
CID Crime Branch sleuths on Saturday said they’ve arrested four persons who are involved in trafficking two girls allegedly for the purpose of trafficking.
On interrogation, police found that the girls were brought from outside the state and were being supplied by a couple to a middleman in Goa, who in turn sent girls to prospective customers.
4 held for human trafficking, inter-state racket busted
Samir went the to urinal while the announcement was being made but when he returned, both his daughter-in-law and the man, identified as Ramesh, were missing, said police.
During investigations, police found that Ramesh, who stays in Usmanpur Pusta, northwest Delhi, had gone to Roorkee in Uttaranchal and followed him. At Roorkee bus stop, Ramesh and one Sandhya Devi were arrested while they were settling a deal of Rs 20,000 for the victim, police said. Police raided Sandhya's house in Roorkee and rescued a 15-year-old girl, who was kidnapped from Old Delhi Railway Station earlier.
Pak one of the key sources of women trafficking in world: UN report
A UN report has described Pakistan as the “one of the key sources of women trafficking” in the world. It said that India had also lately emerged as a key destination and transit point for global trafficking of women and girls.
Bombay HC Lambasts Police Inaction in Curbing Human Trafficking
The court was hearing a petition filed by a non-government organisation "Prerna" which has sought reinvestigation into the case wherein nine girls, who had been rescued from a brothel in 2002, had gone missing.
The court was told that the number of minor girls rescued from brothels during the last three years was shocking. As many as 26 girls were rescued in 2003, twelve in 2004, 31 girls were rescued in 2005 and 27 during the current year, the court was told.
Human trafficking from Nepal on rise
Trafficking of Nepalese women and children into India, especially from the western districts, has increased significantly in recent days due to lax security at border checkpoints.
A large number of women and children are being trafficked into India from checkpoints west of Butwal, representatives of several Indian and Nepalese non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and security officials stated during an interaction on 'controlling cross-border human trafficking'.
Woman held for human trafficking
A middle-aged woman allegedly engaged in trafficking of humans was caught at New Delhi railway station on Monday after a woman she had sold to a brothel-owner on G.B. Road here eight years ago identified her. The accused had come to the Capital to sell another young woman from Latur in Maharashtra to flesh traders.
Nodal cell in Home Ministry to deal with human trafficking
The centre has directed state governments to deal with such crimes in a holistic manner and to evolve an effective and comprehensive strategy encompassing rescue, relief and rehabilitation of victims besides deterrent action against violators.
Govt push to drive against human trafficking
A total of 8900 cases of trafficking were registered in 2004-2005. 13,300 persons were arrested, 93% of them women and minors. 85% of them were convicted, IPS officer P Nair, currently on deputation to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), quotes these figures to illustrate how the justice system is criminalising victims, but not traffickers.
The boy racer
Budhia Singh was sold as a baby by his illiterate and impoverished mother. Now, aged five, he is India's most improbable young sports star, famed for his astonishing feats of endurance running.
India to fight human trafficking at grassroots
Village heads across impoverished rural India will be asked to help fight human trafficking by keeping a register of people who leave in search of work. The United Nations Development Project (UNDP) is also asking village chiefs to watch out for traffickers who lure villagers with promises of well-paid jobs but force them into the sex trade.
India is transit hub for human trafficking
The study said 72 percent of human trafficking is for commercial sex, 80.26 percent of trafficking of women takes place in Bihar - most of it happening during migration for labour - and 12.36 percent of the total trafficking is due to family traditions.
Human trafficking turning into organised crime in India
"Trafficking can be disguised as migration, commercial sex or marriage. But what begins as a voluntary decision often ends up as trafficking as victims find themselves in unfamiliar destinations, subjected to unexpected work," said E Rajarethinam of GCT.
Pointing out that trafficking is deeply related to deprivation, Jill Shirey, a consultant at American Centre for International Labour Solidarity (ACILS) said that people are "forced into accepting unknown jobs due to lack of options."
India rejects U. S. criticism for inability to control human trafficking
The Indian ministry statement said India and the United States have an ongoing dialogue on the trafficking in persons, and the annual report "certainly is not helpful to furthering our dialogue."
Rep. Christopher Smith, a Republican author of the 2000 law that established the annual trafficking reports, said in Washington that the Bush administration went too easy on India by placing it on the watch list instead of among the dozen worst offenders.
Microsoft Teams with CAP to Train Victims of Human Trafficking in IT
Microsoft Corp. India Private Limited, under its Project Jyoti program, has announced a grant of around Rs. 2.2 crore to CAP (Child and Police project), a Hyderabad-based NGO, to provide IT skills training to victims of human trafficking as well as vulnerable communities at risk of trafficking.
Human trafficking in the northeast fuelling HIV/AIDS
We visited 25 relief camps of internally displaced persons [IDPs] in Kokrajhar in Bodoland Territorial Council, Assam [state]. Nearly 200,000 people are living in these camps without proper food. Traffickers carry out recruitment drives in such relief camps. They make false promises of jobs as domestic help in big cities.
Bangladesh busts human trafficking ring: 34 rescued
The women and children, some as young as five-years-old, were brought by the traffickers from four neighbourhood districts with false promises of lucrative jobs in India.
But they are mostly forced into prostitution as they illegally enter India, said Adhikar, a local non-government charity for children from poor families.
Need to rid Gujarat of human trafficking
Last August, the city police had raided several embroidery units in Rakhial and rescued 84 child labourers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The boys, aged between seven and 17 years, had come to Gujarat in search of employment. Subsequent raids by juvenile remand home officials and cops on jewellery production units revealed that child labourers from West Bengal and Orissa were working in sub-human conditions for some money to send back home.
Slavery in Our Time
Historians will look back in puzzlement at the way our 21st century world tolerates the slavery of more than a million children in brothels around the world.
India alone may have half a million children in its brothels, more than any other country in the world. Visit the brothel district in almost any city in India, and you can meet 14-year-old girls who have been kidnapped off the street, or drugged, or offered jobs as maids, and then sold into a world that they often escape only by dying of AIDS.
Indo-Pak girls forced into prostitution
In a startling case of organised women trafficking that has come to light, Pakistani and Indian girls aged between 11 and 13 are being smuggled to the Middle East countries for being forced into prostitution there. The girls, who are shown as aged between 20 and 22 on their passports, are brought to these countries on the pretext of getting them attracting jobs.
Hitting Brothel Owners where it Hurts - 24 January 2006
Imagine what you would have done if you'd been in Hasina Bibi's sandals. She was a lonely 16-year-old working in a garment factory in Bangladesh when an older employee began mothering her. They grew close, and one day the older woman gave Hasina some cakes to eat. Two days later, Hasina emerged from a drug-induced stupor in India, sold to a brothel in faraway Gujarat. The brothel's owner beat Hasina and threatened to deform her face with acid if she tried to escape. She had to do whatever the customers wanted, with or without condoms.
Caritas India Campaign against Hunger and Disease, 2005
Mona, (not her real name) a girl from Jharkhand, aged 14 years, had been trafficked to Delhi for domestic work. Her father sold her to an agent for Rupees 18, 000. In Delhi, the agent told her employers that they should pay her salary directly to him, so that he can forward the money to her poor parents. But in reality, no money reached Mona’s parents.
Prostitution of Nepalese girls rampant in Indian brothel
''Young girls are trafficked from Nepal to brothels in Mumbai and Kolkata at an average age of twelve. They are trapped into the vicious cycle of prostitution, debt and slavery. By the time they are in their mid-twenties, they are at the dead end or 'cul-de-sac','' the study noted.
US accuses NGO of 'trafficking'
COMMENT from Laurence Time: 2/28/2007, 4:12 PM - US government is getting tough on the issue of trafficking of human beings. Indicating its seriousness on the issue, the US government-funding agency USAID terminated funding to the NGO Sampada Grameen Mahila Sanstha (SANGRAM) for reportedly supporting brothel owners and obstructing the rescue of minor girls from red light areas.
Northeast girls in metros forced into prostitution
Gullible young girls from the northeast are being forced into prostitution in the metropolises after being lured by organized syndicates promising them glamorous careers and lucrative jobs, a rights group has said. "The situation is extremely serious with smart operators flooding the northeast hunting for good looking young girls for modeling assignments or jobs in call centers with good salaries," said Hasina Kharbih, chairperson of Impulse NGO Network. "But in reality, many of these women were pushed into the notorious world of prostitution."
Stopping the traffic
Slavery is not dead in India. Fuelled by trafficking, it is spreading far and wide. Thousands of Indians, especially women and children, are trafficked everyday to some destination or the other and are forced to lead lives of bondage. They survive in brothels, factories, guesthouses, dance bars, farms and even in the homes of well-off Indians, with no control over their bodies and lives. Women and children are also being trafficked for illegal adoptions, organ transplants, the circus and the entertainment industry.
Police rescue 24 girls from red light area
Police said the rescued girls had been whisked away from various places in Nepal, West Bengal, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. Some of them had been restrained at the brothels for as long as two years.
Teen escapes sex trade
Tasmina Khatun agreed to elope with Muku Mondal, a man she loved, not knowing the nightmare she was inviting. Police yesterday rescued the 15-year-old girl from the Sunderbans when she was about to be taken to Kashmir to be sold off to flesh traders.
Bangla prostitution racket busted
The minor girl, Mallika, hailing from a poverty stricken family, was approached by a 'sympathetic-looking' Bangladeshi woman, who offered to take the girl to Mumbai with the promise that the family would see a change in their fortunes. At Apna Ghar, Mallika narrated her woeful tale of being bought in from Bangladesh and being forced into the prostitution trade, to the counselor appointed by the government.
Speaking out for the `nameless'
"Anamika" (the nameless) is a documentary on trafficking of women and children from Andhra Pradesh to various parts of the country. It narrates how young girls are deceived, forced or coerced to enter the trade every year.
The face that launched a thousand shares
Thousands of Indians, especially women and children, are trafficked everyday to some destination or the other and are forced to lead lives of slavery. They survive in brothels, factories, guesthouses, dance bars, farms and even in the homes of well-off Indians, with no control over their bodies and lives. Women and children are also being trafficked for illegal adoptions, organ transplants, the circus and the entertainment industry.
Little Hands of Slavery
In the tender age of five or six these children are made to work up to fifteen hours a day in stone quarries, fields, picking rags on city streets or as domestic servants. They do not go to school, and throughout their lifetime they possibly wouldn’t even have the barest skills of literacy.
Couple Arrested For Human Trafficking
Sunil Dayalkar alias Sanjay More and wife Kushi alias Nishikant Biswas allegedly bought Asha (name changed) from one Sanjay Dutt for Rs 65,000 and then forced her into prostitution.
This Will Force Us To Clean Up Our Act
NGOs estimate that at least 7,000 girls are trafficked into India from Nepal every year. They mostly end up in brothels in metros, condemned to a life of deprivation and torture. Children who are trafficked end up either in the flesh trade or become child labor.
17,000 Nepal Women Forced Into Prostitution In India
According to the study, the investigators talked personally to the Nepali women in the brothels of India in course of doing research. Most of them fall prey to the avarice of family members. Local brokers come second in the line of the process of selling them there.
The Saving of Innocents - The Satya Interview with Ruchira Gupta
An uncle or a family friend pays the parent something like $30. There is the middleman in a packed city, the border guard who takes a payoff, and the agent who takes the girls across the border to the people who then transport them to Bombay and on to the brothel madam, who buys the girls for $50 to $100.
Human Trafficking Situation In India Grim
"The Government of India has shown little progress in addressing anti-trafficking in persons concerns since May... In Mumbai, convictions for trafficking-related offences increased from three in 2003 to 11 thus far in 2004 but remain grossly unrepresentative in a city of over 18 million inhabitants."
