Women & Children Welfare Association

2nd Floor D Wing Mani Bhavan, Mumbai: 400021 Maharashtra, India. Tel: 022-24441008 Website: www.wcwa.com

Ref: WCWA/MI/5-8

August 5, 2011

Smt. Krishna Tirath Minister of State Ministry of Women and Child Development 6th Floor A Wing Shastri Bhavan, New Delhi: 110001 Delhi, India. Sub: Report of the Committee for the Study of Rise in Child Trafficking in India Dear Smt. Krishna Tirath, At the request of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India, the Women & Children Welfare Association convened a new committee, the Committee for the Study of Child Trafficking in India; herein referred to as CSCT. The CSCT has prepared a report illuminating the various causes of rise in child trafficking and proposing measures to impede the same. Kindly study the attached report and implement its suggestions in a timely fashion. Cordially,

() Head of CSCT Women & Children Welfare Association

Enclosed: Report on Rise in Child Trafficking in India

Women & Children Welfare Association

2nd Floor D Wing Mani Bhavan, Mumbai: 400021 Maharashtra, India. Tel: 022-24441008 Website: www.wcwa.com The Committee formed post your request has done intensive analysis on the rise of child trafficking. The CSCT has evaluated the reasons of the rise of this sensitive issue and would like to put forward some measures to prevent the same. Procedure: As regards the development of the research methodology, the project aimed to increase the knowledge of trafficking by using both a qualitative and quantitative approach to collect information. 1. Interviews The strategic aim was to collect the information from various sources, including through thematic interviews with various experts as well as with victims of trafficking. 2. Literature survey Information was collected from police, prosecutor and court data, as well as data from various registries and media information, such as newspaper articles. The purpose of the varied data sources was to make it possible to describe trafficking from a broad perspective. 3. Meetings with experts and heads of various NGOs from all over the country In order to bring together people who work with human trafficking, and to create a network of relevant experts both nationally and internationally several different meetings were arranged. 4. Discussions and debates The CSCT aimed to increase the awareness of the phenomenon in the various states, through dissemination to experts, to media representatives and also to the general public by holding discussions and debates on various TV channels and in schools and colleges. 5. On-site surveys and interviews with different juvenile home authorities The CSCT inspected juvenile homes and orphanages from all over the country. 6. The CSCT created our own page on numerous social networking sites and collected views from people all over the world

The CSCT has created the following page on popular social networking sites: www.facebook.com/RiseinChildTraffickinginIndia www.twitter.com/RiseinChildTraffickinginIndia Causes: The compilation of the information collected has brought to light many disturbing reasons for the rise in child trafficking. The exact methodology of trafficking appears to be through legitimate enterprises (humanitarian organizations, children's homes, employment agencies etc) these enterprises have recruiters inside the organizations who then abduct (though deceit or force) children. 1. Unemployment & Poverty This is a major problem, as India has a high population of unemployed citizens. This may lead to practice of various crimes, which includes child trafficking. This is mostly done in rural areas where unemployment and poverty is exceptionally high. The parents extreme poverty causes them to sell their children in order to pay debts or gain income while some of them are deceived that the traffickers will give a better life and education for their children. This movement of children from rural areas to urban areas is very common. Victims are trafficked to different places to do different jobs. This is often not recognized as slavery but as a chance of getting employed. The childs parents are ignorant of the risks of giving their children to the traffickers because they are of the mentality at least my child got a job. The CSCT research shows that most trafficked children come from families with five or more children. This clearly shows that parents cannot provide the needs of children by means of unemployment, and hence hand over their children to traffickers. 2. Lack of vocational opportunities and insufficient educational opportunities People from rural areas are mostly oppressed with issues of not being provided with good education and hence there is a lack of vocational opportunities. Many people from these areas, therefore, accept every offer given to them and do not consider the risks. This lack of vocational opportunity causes traffickers to get an opportunity to misuse and deceive people who are illiterate. Even though victims are mislead by traffickers they do not bother asking questions concerning the offer provided to them and accept everything given to them thinking that they will gain a better life. 3. Ineffective implementation anti - slavery laws Despite child trafficking being illegal, it is a low risk job due the lack of efficient antislavery laws. This increases the rate of trafficked child. Traffickers make a lot of money from doing such business. They have illegal connections worldwide which makes it hard for government to track them down. Even when the traffickers are caught in boarder gate trafficking people the victims are re-trafficked and police are bribed by the traffickers. The CSCT estimates that trafficking of children generates $7 to $10 billion annually for traffickers. Since this trafficking business is profitable, traffickers earn a lot of money; the recruiter may earn $50 to $1000 per child delivered to the employer. Profits vary according to the source states, destinations & use of the trafficked child.

4. Social factors There are some situations of a breakdown of traditional family structure, for example the death of one or both parents. Such a family faces difficulties which it may not be able to overcome. Thus the needs of the family and, sometimes, greed may contribute to a familys decision (to place a child as a head member of the family so that the said child can be handed over to the traffickers in order to bear costs of the family). 5. Faulty adoption system (Intra- & Inter- country) The adoption system both legitimizes and incentives stealing, kidnapping, trafficking, and buying children. The CSCT does not claim that the adoption system explicitly authorizes these pernicious practices, but rather claims that the adoption and legal systems create incentives to engage in these destructive practices. In addition, the legal rules and processes associated with adoption are clearly inadequate to prevent these illicit practices from becoming a significant part of the adoption system. Indeed, the legal rules of the adoption system are systematically used to launder or legitimize these practices, by processing as orphans, and then adoptee, infants and children who were stolen, bought, or kidnapped from their birth families. Various forms of corruption within the adoption system, such as bribery of government officials to facilitate the speedy adoption of a true orphan or extra payoffs to an orphanage to secure a ready supply of orphans, could be viewed by some as necessary or peripheral evils toward a greater good. The term child laundering expresses the claim that the current inter-country adoption system frequently takes children illegally from birth parents, and then uses the official processes of the adoption and legal systems to launder them as legally adopted children. Thus, the adoption system treats children in a manner analogous to a criminal organization engaged in money laundering, which obtains funds illegally but then launders them through a legitimate business (The Berkeley Electronic Press, 2006) 6. Organ rackets Although very little information is available on this aspect of trafficking, newspaper reports and anecdotal reports from persons working on trafficking issues clearly indicate that trafficking of children for organ replacements for persons who can afford to buy them is a lucrative business for the traffickers. Akram hailing from Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh was approached by a person named R.C. Gupta in Lucknow who lured him with a promise of a job. He took him to Jallandhar where he reportedly had Akrams kidney removed and transplanted to his wife, a patient of renal failure. Akram today is 22; he was 18 when his kidney had been forcibly removed. (The Hindustan Times, 20 April, 2001) 7. Juvenile homes & Orphanage A large number of missing children cases from government-run children homes strengthens the common belief that government homes do not provide child-friendly atmosphere. Most childrens homes in India are in a pathetic condition. They are severely short-staffed, and lack expert intervention and adequate extra-curricular activities. The childrens homes are crowded and kids are forced to survive under inhuman conditions.

They are served poor food, often undercooked and also have no access to medical aid or formal education. Childrens homes across Karnataka are fast turning unsafe for the residents. Here are some grim facts. As many as 891 kids have gone missing from 33 homes located in various districts of the state. These figures were made available after a right to information application was filed with the department of women and child development, Karnataka, by Odanadi Seva Samsthe a Mysore-based social organization working for the rescue, rehabilitation and reintegration of trafficked women and children. (DNA Bangalore April, 2011) 8. Child Terrorism The use of children as soldiers and terrorists is a commonly used practice that threatens the future of millions of children and young adults in some of the most desolate and poverty stricken areas of India. As long as poverty, religious indifference, inequality and ethnic hatred continue to exist, the harder it will be to solve the flood of children joining the ranks of terrorists and armed groups in numerous areas in India. Some reports estimate that 300,000 children under 18 years of age are recruited and used by armies and armed groups in violent conflicts in almost 30 countries worldwide (Peters, 2005), Six million more children have been disabled or seriously injured in wars over the last decade, and one million children have been orphaned. (Singer, 2006). 9. Illegal Activities a) Begging: The children with a handicap are more vulnerable in a situation where trafficking is for the purpose of begging. Poverty and handicap is the ideal combination for the children to be trafficked in the belief that the handicap will induce sympathy in the giver. That belief puts the child beggar at serious risk of being deliberately maimed in order to increase his or her earning potential. Street children, who are easily available to be picked up, are another vulnerable category. In 1997, a large number of Bengali children were deported to India from Saudi Arabia, where they had been taken on the pretence that they would visit Mecca. Instead they remained in the country, forced to beg every day from the many pilgrims there. On their return to India, it was discovered that several of them had broken limbs. (Ofelia Calcetas-Santos. 1999) b) Drug peddling and smuggling: Use of children for drug peddling is common because it is assumed that they would be suspected the least. Children are initiated into drugs and then used as conduits for peddling. It appears that the major factor pushing girls from Nagaland in the North East towards sex trade is drugs. (The Telegraph, 13 July, 1997 as reported in Jonaki, Vo1. 1 No. 2. September, 1997). A study carried out by Butterflies, a Delhi based NGO, reveals that girl children as young as nine or ten are initiated into drugs and sexually abused. They are also used as couriers, as they are rarely frisked by the cops (Butterflies, Undated.) Activists of the Kerala Samskarika Sangham alleged that 31 boys have been reported missing in Malappuram and 19 in Kozhikode. According to popular belief the boys were now in the grip of an organized mafia gang, which pushes them into earning a living as drug peddlers, pimps and touts. Some of them were allegedly forced into homosexual activities. The mafia targets unsuspecting boys who leave home or those returning late

night. The boys are pampered with money and drugged heavily, inducing them to become addicts, says P.A. Pouran, State General Secretary of the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties. Later, the boys are trained to become carriers of drugs and gold. (The Indian Express, 7 May, 1997 as reported in Jonaki, Vol. 1. No. 2. September, 1997) c) Pornography: According to FACSE, interactions with children on the streets of Mumbai indicate that the use of children in pornography exists in an alarming magnitude & there is an urgent need to break the silence that shields such heinous acts from the public eye. The street children have reported that such incidents of children being picked up are very common. A fact that was confirmed by the street boys is that girls are picked up more often and receive more expensive gifts than boys. Often the impoverished parents of such children are in collusion with the offenders in lieu of the expensive gifts and other remuneration they are provided with. There have been cases wherein children have gone with such gifts alluring people more than once. The Police too admit their suspicions about the widespread existence of such rackets in Mumbai. (FACSE, 2000) Recommendations: The national study has thrown open various avenues of research which need to be undertaken in order to further strengthen some of the findings emanating from the study. 1. Juvenile Justice Boards, Child Welfare Committees and Special Juvenile Police Units should be set up in each district and manned by sensitive and trained personnel. In existing institutions, standards of care should be established and maintained. Institutions under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2000 are corrective institutions. Children in conflict with the law in these institutions should be provided with all the opportunities to reform and develop into responsible citizens. The present state of the existing institutions leaves a lot to be desired. The study reveals that often caregivers of the institutions are also abusers. This behaviour of the caregivers destroys the faith and trust of the child and completely alienates him/her from society itself. This should be prevented by strict monitoring and supervisions of homes, maintenance of detailed records of children, deinstitutionalization of children, wherever possible, and training and sensitization of caregivers in institutions. 2. Migration reallocation and rapid urbanization have forced a very large number of children onto the streets. Such children are easily picked by human traffickers and eventually survive by begging, working, scavenging, rag picking and working illegally in various minor factories. It is essential to provide outreach services to these children through bridge education, night shelters and vocational skills, so as to get them off the streets, reduce their vulnerability and enable them to sustain themselves. 3. Children go missing for a number of different reasons. Difficult and abusive situations at home often force children to run away; economic compulsions make them move to urban and semi-urban areas in search of a living; and sometimes they are trafficked for domestic work, other forms of labour or commercial sexual exploitation. Annually, large numbers of children go missing and there is little attempt to track them or trace them. Such children are most vulnerable to all forms of abuse and exploitation and are easy preys of human traffickers. Not only should they be tracked but existing

mechanisms for their rescue, rehabilitation, repatriation and reintegration should be reviewed and strengthened while keeping in view the best interests of the child

4. The most effective way to counter organ trafficking and their devastating effects is to address the rumored organ trade candidly. The discussion and passage of legislation to protect children from trafficking in organs may adequately calm the anxiety of Indian citizens. While legislation aimed at crippling the alleged trade in children's organs or laws designed to prevent the development of such a trade may pacify fears, in light of the present scarcity of transplant organs and their increasing monetary value on the underground market, only a noteworthy alleviation of the shortage of transplant organs will ultimately safeguard children. 5. It has been constantly noticed that in rural areas children tend to abandon their homes in search of financial opportunities and hence migrate towards cities and towns where they become highly vulnerable to human traffickers. Setting up a large number of small scale industries for children of working age, along with provision of working after school hours would affect this critical situation positively. Conclusion: There are number of reports and documents on the issue of child trafficking, but there is very little systematic effort so far to collate them. As a result, although there are interventions being made across the country by various groups and individuals, not much is known about these efforts. However, a coordinated effort among the groups working on this issue is necessary if any change in law and policy has to be brought about. Besides, trafficking being an area that is extremely difficult to work in because of the type of person involved, the organized nature of the crime and the modus operandi, networking provides a support and back up to the individual groups concerned.