Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is the modern-day form of slavery. It requires the use of force, fraud,
or coercion by a trafficker to compel a person into, or hold someone in, an employment
situation in which he or she will be criminally exploited. Human trafficking is a
pernicious crime that violates the fundamental principles of our society. For traffickers,
victims are commodities to be traded and exploited in any market. Trafficking may occur
when victims are transported across borders or within a nation, or may not involve
transportation at all. Victims, often women, are usually lured by promises of well-paying
jobs. Once deprived of the opportunity to return home or communicate with their
families, victims are generally held through force or threats in situations of sexual
exploitation or forced labor.

In its dictionary meaning, the concept of trafficking denotes a trade in something that
should not be traded in. Thus, we have terms like drug trafficking, arms trafficking and
human trafficking.

The working definition of trafficking which was adopted has been stated in the U.N.
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially women and
children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised
Crime, 2000, to which India is a signatory. It defines trafficking as:

the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring 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 a 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 practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of
organs.

Human trafficking differs from people smuggling. The trafficked victim is enslaved, or
the terms of their debt bondage are fraudulent or highly exploitative. The trafficker takes
away the basic human rights of the victim. Victims are sometimes tricked and lured by
false promises or physically forced. Some traffickers use coercive and manipulative
tactics including deception, intimidation, feigned love, isolation, threat and use of
physical force, debt bondage, other abuse, or even force-feeding with drugs to control
their victims.

Trafficked people usually come from the poorer regions of the world, where opportunities
are limited, and are often from the most vulnerable in society, such as runways, refugees,
or other displaced persons.

Trafficking of children often involves exploitation of the parents' extreme poverty. The
latter may sell children to traffickers in order to pay off debts or gain income or they may
be deceived concerning the prospects of training and a better life for their children.
Women, who form over 80% of trafficking victims, are particularly at risk to become
involved in sex trafficking. Potential kidnappers exploit lack of opportunities, promise
good jobs or opportunities for study, and then force the victims to become prostitutes,
participate in pornography or escort services. The main motive of a woman (in some
cases an underage girl) to accept an offer from a trafficker is better financial opportunities
for herself or her family. According to United Nations Population Fund report on 'State of
World Population "Trafficked women are usually forced into prostitution and sex tourism,
commercial marriages and other "female" occupations such as domestic work,
agricultural and sweatshop labour".

Some Causes of trafficking:

Poverty, Perceived higher standards of life elsewhere, Lack of employment opportunities,

Organized crime and presence of organized criminal gangs, Regional imbalances,
Economic disparities, Social discrimination, Corruption in government, Political
instability, Armed conflict, Uprooting of communities because of mega projects without
proper Resettlement and Rehabilitation packages, Profitability, Growing deprivation and
marginalization of the poor, Insufficient penalties against traffickers, Driven by demand;
demand is high for prostitutes and other forms of labour.

Process /organisation of trafficking

Central to the organisation of trafficking are the people who become “highly profitably,
low risk, expendable, reusable and resell able commodities” (Richard 1999). This trade in
human beings as chattels and treatment of their bodies as commodities becomes possible
because of the incremental link between body and money, the end objective of this
process always being instrumentalisation for gains.

There is broad agreement on the stages involved. These people are listed as recruiters of
people from a village or city; transportation to a designated location/transit point;
possible shift to a central location; before the move to their ultimate destination.
Sometimes the trafficked persons are shifted several times before they arrive at their final
destination, where the ‘sale’ takes place. The different elements involved in this process
seem to create an impossible number of permutations and combinations (ILO 2002a).

Recruitment

Recruiters/Procurers: Recruiters can be neighbours, friends of families, relatives of

friends, acquaintances returned from abroad; women who have migrated or who have
been trafficked, women friends returned from abroad; husbands, fathers, boyfriends or
lovers. Some recruiters were gay men who were trusted by women because of their sex
orientation (Raymond 2002). They can be drug peddlers, head masons at construction
sites, even band leaders in dancing/live bars (ISS 2003a), motorcycle pilots as in Goa
(CRG 2003) or labour contractors (ISS 2003c). They either use friends and acquaintances
to recruit or rely on word of mouth. Terms like dalal or dalali are used, to refer to
traffickers (Nirmala Niketan, College of Social Work, 2003; Gupta 2003).

Place: People are reportedly recruited at places like cinema halls, bus stops, railway
stations, airports, streets and their homes. Other places mentioned are cafes, restaurants,
beauty contests and beauty parlours. State and national highways, quarry and
construction work sites, and areas where locals are displaced without proper
rehabilitation may also be sites for potential victims.

Time: Traffickers choose special times for recruitment. They take advantage of difficult
periods, either before the harvesting season or during a drought, when many locals look
elsewhere for income to survive (HRW 1995). Traffickers also keep themselves informed
about severely impoverished areas or those which have suffered climatic, economic or
political disasters (Johnston and Khan 1998: 53; ISS 2003a). They also reportedly recruit
people during festivals (ISS 2003a, and 2003c).

Methods: The ranges of the tactics or strategies reportedly used vary from the extremely
violent (drugging, kidnapping and abduction) to persuasion, material inducements,
befriending and deception.

Characteristics of traffickers: Traffickers are usually young men and middle-aged women
who are significantly older than the young women/children they recruit. They are natives
and agents who travel back and forth from home countries/regions to receiving regions
and generally have links with the villages to which the victims belong.

Often, these agents speak several languages (Giri 1999: 77, Tumlin 2000). They may
have multiple roles. For instance, those who fuel migration, with its outcome in
trafficking, may often also be the people who facilitate other, less exploitative, forms of
migration, as in the case of refugees (Tumlin 2000).

Players: Trafficking is said to involve a range of players ‘along the road from acquisition
to exploitation’ (ILO 2002a: 13). They are generally found in the context of organised
trafficking.

Networks may involve the police, visa/passport officials, railway/bus authorities and
employees, taxi/autorickshaw drivers or rickshaw pullers (DWCD 1996). The various
roles have been classified as financiers or investors; procurers or recruiters; organisers;
document forgers; corrupt public officials or protectors; brothel operators and the owners
and managers of sex establishments; escorts, guides or travel companions and crew
members (Richard 1999; Scholenhardt 1999; Raymond 2002).

DWCD (1996) has identified two types of traffickers: primary and secondary. The latter
are said to operate behind the scenes with connections in government circles, which are
used to provide themselves with protection. Pimps and procurers are the primary
traffickers.
Types of operations: People can be trafficked via organised international networks,
through local trafficking rings or by occasional traffickers. Thus, traffickers may operate
alone, in small gangs or as part of organised crime groups (Richard 1999; Kelly 2001;
Icduygu and Toktas 2002).

The traffickers can distributed according to age and sex; caste and religion; education and
marital status; state and country of origin. The share of men and women among the
respondents was around fifty-fifty, but relatively high percentage of female traffickers in
a generally male-dominated trade. The traffickers adopt various methods of traffic in
women and children. The following methods have been commonly employed for
trafficking in women and children in India: (a) offering them jobs as domestic servants;
(b) promising jobs in the film world; (c) dangling before them jobs in factories; (d)
offering money; (e) luring them with ‘pleasure trips’; (f) making false promises of
marriage; (g) befriending them by giving goodies, (girls who have run away from home
or are street children are highly vulnerable to the traffickers); (h) offering to take them on
pilgrimages; (i) making other kinds of false promises and (j) coercion.

Social Impact of Trafficking

• Violation of whole gamut of laws and human rights

• Threat to society because traffickers operate across borders with impunity with
the involvement of organized criminals
• Trafficking manifests and perpetuates patriarchical attitudes and undermines
efforts to promote gender equality
• Enormous losses to communities and governments in terms of human and social
capital investments
• Loss of future productivity and earning power through low education , ill health
and epidemic like HIV/ AIDS

Impact of trafficking on individuals

• Trafficked persons are traumatized by their experiences

• Depression and suicidal thoughts are common
• The mental state of survivors include helplessness, withdrawal, disassociation ,
self blame
• Trafficking survivors under go psychiatric disorders depressive disorders and
psychotic disorders
• Stigmatised and outcast and facing moral and legal isolation
• Vulnerable to HIV /AIDS infections, drug addiction and high risk abortions.

National framework of laws related to trafficking in India

1. The Constitution of India, under Article 23 (1), prohibits trafficking in human

beings and forced labour. This right is enforceable against the State and private
citizens.
 2. Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls Act, 1956 (SITA) was
enacted under Article 35 of the Indian Constitution with the object of inhibiting or
abolishing the immoral traffic in women and girls.
3. The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956 is a special legislation that deals
exclusively with trafficking. The Act defines the terms ‘brothel’, ‘child’,
‘corrective institutions’, ‘prostitution’, ‘protective home’, ‘public place’, ‘special
police officer’ and ‘trafficking officer’. The purpose of the enactment was to
inhibit or to abolish commercialised vice, namely the traffic in women and girls
for the purpose of prostitution, as an organised means of living.

The other law related to trafficking

• The Probation of Offenders Act, 1958

• The Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986
• The Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929
• The Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance, 1944
• The Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act, 1956
• The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976
• The Child labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986
• The Indian Evidence Act, 1872
• Criminal Procedure Code, 1973
• The Transplantation of Human Organ Act, 1994
• The Information Technology Act, 2000
• The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000
• The Karnataka Devadasi (Prohibition of Dedication) Act, 1982
• Andhra Pradesh Devadasi (Prohibiting Dedication) Act, 1989
• Goa’s Children’s Act, 2003

Prevention

Trafficking is a human rights issue as well as a social issue because it affects not only the
rights and dignity of the individuals concerned, but also has a direct bearing on the
community and society at large. Trafficking can in no way be considered as just a
criminal issue or a law and order problem. It is primarily a matter of the protection of
human rights, especially those of women and children. Prevention of trafficking cannot
be successful without the involvement of the community.

• Community surveillance appears to be a good example of how community

involvement, combined with outside support, may assist communities to establish
systems that can take action in the event of suspected trafficking, and that can
help those in difficulty. However, care must be taken not to equate women leaving
the village with trafficking. Similarly, care must be taken not to abuse the system,
so that it does not become a mechanism for controlling women and girls.
 • Establishing women's groups that can provide support and take action in the event
of problems is also a promising anti-trafficking strategy. Such groups can be used
as a forum for giving advice, and for support and shelter to those facing family or
financial problems who might otherwise be tempted to run away or leave the
village via an unsafe route (e.g., with an unknown broker).

• Working with children and young people through schools, teachers or child clubs
appears to be an innovative anti-trafficking strategy. Peer support/influence is
harnessed and the groups/clubs may act as neutral fora where children who are
experiencing family problems can seek help.

• Involving trafficking survivors is another promising strategy. Their involvement

may be useful in two ways. First, they can make anti-trafficking messages more
realistic and relevant to particular target groups. Experience in other fields has
shown that people are more likely to identify with peer-led education rather than
that given by social workers. Second, the example of one NGO, which helped
trafficking survivors to set up their own organization, shows that their
involvement can also play an important part in the rebuilding of their own self-
esteem and confidence, and may act as an important capacity-building
opportunity.

Bibliography

1. Prevention of Trafficking and the Care and Support of Trafficked Persons - The
Asia Foundation - http://www.popcouncil.org/pdfs/horizons/trafficking1.pdf
2. Azad India Foundation - Girl and Women Trafficking in India -
http://www.azadindia.org/social-issues/WomenTrafficking-in-India.html
3. http://www.youandaids.org/Themes/Trafficking.asp
4. The Times of India – Women trafficking in India
5. Prof. Martin Patt, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts – Human
Trafficking and Modern day Slavery
6. Department of Justice US – An Introduction to Human Trafficking