Child trafficking in India

A lack of access to quality education and low literacy levels and rates increase child trafficking rates in India.[7] The challenge of limited access to education impacts all of the people involved to worsen the consequences.[8] For the child, a lack of access to education limits their future opportunities and can hinder their mental health.[8] It can also be linked to feelings of increased vulnerability, low self-esteem, and a lack of knowledge about their rights.[8] The absence of an effective public education system, and a lack of financial security make finding employment in unskilled labour sectors (such as construction and domestic help) much more appealing to children rather than pursuing an education.[8] A lack of good, affordable educational opportunities and financial security can lead to a devaluing of education from the parents' perspectives.[8] This is especially true for girls.[8] When weighing the costs of educating a daughter against other costs to the family, a daughter's education is often foregone.[8] Since the financial benefits of an education are only truly seen in the future, the value of an education in the present is considered to be quite low.[8] This reasoning is supported by the lack of economic opportunities available to underprivileged and marginalized communities in India.[8] The lack of educational opportunities is exploited by traffickers who often sell parents and children alike on the promise of steady, high paying jobs to lure them away from their homes.[8]

In addition to institutional challenges in India, traditional religious and cultural practices also pose a threat to vulnerable children. In some parts of India, for example, young girls are forced into the system of Devadasi where they're "forced into a lifetime of ritual sex slavery" and given to an elder of the village to be their concubine.[5] Child marriage is also one of the leading causes of child trafficking.[9] A lot of children have also been trafficked due to the demand by tourists. People will travel from countries where there are strict enforcement around child trafficking, as well as it being heavily frowned upon and socially unaccepted, to India to find child prostitutes.[10]

Children are very vulnerable when it comes to domestic servitude. Often children are told that they will be offered excellent wages to work as a domestic helper in middle-class homes, but they usually end up being severely underpaid, abused, and sometimes sexually assaulted.[10] This particular type of trafficking is hard to detect because it takes place inside private homes where there is no public enforcement. Every year hundreds of thousands of girls are trafficked from rural India to work as domestic helpers in the urban areas.[11]

Legally, children in India are allowed to do light work, but they are often trafficked for bonded labour and domestic work, and are worked far beyond what is allowed in the country. Children are also forced to work as bonded labourers in brick and stone quarries to pay off family debts owed to moneylenders and employers. They are often forced to work in the use of contraptions that bound them to be unable to escape and then forced to submit to control. Others may be bound by abuse whether physical, emotional, or sexual.[12] Children from India's rural areas migrate or are trafficked for employment in industries, such as spinning mills, cottonseed production, manual work, domestic work in family homes, stone quarrying, brick kilns and tea gardens amongst others, where they are forced to work in hazardous environments for little or no pay.[13] Those forced into labor lose all freedom, being thrown into the workforce, essentially becoming slaves, and losing their childhood.

Children, over adults are often chosen to be trafficked for illegal activities such as begging and organ trade, as they are seen as more vulnerable. Not only are these children being forced to beg for money, but a significant number of those on the streets have had limbs forcibly amputated, or even acid poured into their eyes to blind them by gang masters. Those who are injured tend to make more money, which is why they are often abused in this way.[14] Organ trade is also common, when traffickers trick or force children to give up an organ.

UNICEF estimates that more than 300,000 children under 18 are currently being exploited in more than 30 armed conflicts worldwide. While the majority of child soldiers are between the ages of 15 and 18, some are as young as 7 or 8 years of age.[15] A large number of children are abducted to use as soldiers. Others are used to serve as porters, cooks, guards, servants, messengers, or spies.[16] Many of these young soldiers are sexually abused which often ends with unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. Some children have been forced to commit atrocities against their families and communities. Reports indicate that children were coerced by anti government naxalites to join children's units (“Bal Dasta”), where they were trained and used as couriers and informants, to plant improvised explosive devices and in front-line operations against national security forces.[17]

Children that are exploited for commercial sex are subject to transactions for child pornography and child prostitution and rape. The Commercial Sexual Exploitation (CSE) of women and children generates approximately 400 million US Dollars annually in the city of Mumbai alone.[18] Although it is hard to find accurate numbers for exactly how many children are trafficked, studies and surveys sponsored by the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) estimates that there are about three million prostitutes in the country, of which an estimated 40 percent are children, as there is a growing demand for very young girls to be inducted into prostitution on account of customer preferences.[19] There are many severe[20] consequences these children face from being sexually exploited.

India is viewed as a hub for human trafficking, however the issue is of low priority for Indian Government.[33] The Immoral Traffic Prevention Act was first amended in 1956. The act was created to prevent trafficking and sexual exploitation of women and children[34] but the Act does not provide a clear definition of "'trafficking'".[29] In 2003, India enforced the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, which includes three protocols, specifically the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. The protocol "provides an agreed upon definition of trafficking in persons. It aims at comprehensively addressing trafficking in persons through the so-called three P's - Prosecution of perpetrators, Protection of victims and Prevention of trafficking."[35] The protocol defines trafficking as "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring 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 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 practice similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organ."[33]

On the international stage, intergovernmental organisations, like the United Nations, have been introducing measures to address child trafficking since the early 1900s with varying degrees of success.[36] Some of their more notable measures include the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 by the United Nations, and the adoption of the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children in 2000.[37]

On a national level, Article 23 of the Constitution of India explicitly bans human trafficking.[38] The Government of India has also passed other acts and amended the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to address the challenge of child trafficking.[39] The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1986 (ITPA) is an amended version of The Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls Act, 1956 (SITA). SITA made human trafficking for prostitution illegal and outlined legal action against people involved in human trafficking in any capacity.[40] ITPA made laws friendlier towards the victim. ITPA also created a system to rehabilitate victims of trafficking and prevent them from bring trafficked again.[41] In 2013, the IPC was amended to create new provisions to address human trafficking in India that are more in line with the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children.[42]