Explained: Why Human Trafficking Remains One Of The Top Organised Crimes In India

Human trafficking is one of the most distressing problems faced by many countries in the world. According to the UNODC website, Human Trafficking is ¡°the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people through force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit.

Men, women, and children of all ages and from all backgrounds can become victims of this crime, which occurs in every region of the world. The traffickers often use violence or fraudulent employment agencies and fake promises of education and job opportunities to trick and coerce their victims¡±.

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It is a problem prevalent in India as well

It is considered as the second largest organised crime in India. Human trafficking is still a major issue in India, despite the fact that it is banned under Indian law. People are routinely trafficked illegally through India for commercial sexual exploitation and forced/bonded labor. According to some estimates, forced and bonded labor affects millions of Indians

Mentioned below are some facts and information related to human trafficking in India:

According to a report by Free a Girl Foundation, around 700-800 children are stuck in the red light area of Nagpur, India. According to a study by Reuters out of an estimated 20 million commercial prostitutes in India, 16 million women and girls are victims of sex trafficking. According to Legal Services in India, every hour, four girls in India enter into prostitution, three of them against their will.

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One-third of those accused of human trafficking in nearly 200 cases in West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh are women, according to research published in 2019.

Females account for one-third of the 162 traffickers (accused in incidents of trafficking). In these cases, fifty percent of the defendants, or 216 people, are between the ages of 25 and 45. Snigdha Sen, a researcher worked with a number of organizations, including HELP in Andhra Pradesh, Goranbose Gram Bikash Kendra (GGBK) in West Bengal, and Partners for Anti-Trafficking (PAT), a coalition of eight community-based groups in Bengal, to conduct this research.

According to Sen, only one trafficker from the source area was convicted out of the 198 cases examined, which included the names of 429 suspects. Similarly, only two additional traffickers from the destination area were convicted in all of the cases studied. According to the researcher and the groups involved in the study, "Traffickers enjoy impunity due to a lack of legal help for survivors and a lengthy trial." According to the report, the majority of the traffickers (34 percent, or 148) were neighbours, while 31% were absolutely unknown to the survivors.

As per the National Crime Records Bureau¡¯s 2016 crime statistics, there were 1,100 cases of trafficking. These numbers stood at 2278 in 2018. 2208 cases were reported in 2019 and 1714 in 2020.

As per a survey conducted by the Kailash Satyarthi Foundation - It was found that 21% of the households are potentially ready to send their children into child labor due to their increased economic vulnerability.

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Trafficking spiked as lockdown eased

Save the Children had estimated that the pandemic led to poverty could globally drive 500,000 more girls into forced marriages in 2020.

When the lockdown eased in June and July, child marriages spiked, marking a 17% increase over the previous year.

The United States Department of state ranks each country in the Trafficking in Person (TIP) report on one of four tiers, as mandated by the TVPA (Victims of trafficking and violence protection act, 2000).

Such rankings are based not on the size of a country's problem but on the extent of government efforts to meet the TVPA's minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking, which are generally consistent with the Palermo Protocol. India has consistently featured in Tier 2 also in 2021.

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Countries kept in tier 2 are those whose governments do not fully meet the minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards, and for which:

1. The estimated number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant or is significantly increasing and the country is not taking proportional concrete actions.
2. There is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons from the previous year.

In spite of many laws present in India human trafficking remains an unspoken problem in the country.