UNDERSTANDING THE WEB OF CAUSATION IN HUMAN TRAFFICKING

FIRST PHASE :
TRAFFICKING VICTIM DETECTED / POLICE CELL ALERTED

It is been argued that the presence of trafficked victims is a common place knowledge of the people involved in the sex trade and those responsible for preventing it. The unhealthy nexus between these two power lobbies have rendered the trafficked victim invisible and only when there is the occassional police raid in a red-light area or a high alert in a border area, do their presence come to light.

One may ask why do I say so ?

I am responsible for running health clinics in a famous red-light area in Kolkata (Sonagachi), for the last eight years and never during my weekly visits, did I find the police posted in that locality ever interested in actively locating such trafficked girls (many of them are also minors), they being more interested in their daily quota of gossip, tea and snacks. Again the self appointed guardians of the trade, a group of sex workers who have formed an NGO are always vocal about the number of minor girl children they have prevented from entering the trade but are peculiarly silent about those who are already in the trade and are visible to anybody and everybody who care to visit the locality.

SECOND PHASE :
TRAFFICKER ARRESTED / VICTIM RESCUED

THIRD PHASE :
TRIAL CONDUCTED / VICTIM SHELTERED IN TRANSIT HOME - LEGAL AID

LAST PHASE :
TRAFFICKER CONVICTED - SENT TO JAIL / VICTIM SENT BACK TO FAMILY

To understand this situation, one has to have a deep insight into the SITA (1956) and ITPA (1986), Acts that deal with trafficking and during this span of 30 years the emphasis having being shifted from suppression to prevention of trafficking. Although the victims of immoral traffic and sexual exploitation are mostly women and the traffickers and the exploiters like pimps, brothel owners, racketeers, local hooligans and the police are mostly men, the number of women arrested under ITPA far outnumber men - a paradoxical situation.

The police and courts are invested with enormous powers and the connivance between the implementors and the traffickers/racketeers has often resulted in unfair extortion of money from sex workers and no punishment to the traffickers/racketeers. Thus ITPA fails to meet its goal in prevention of trafficking. The lTPA Act was thus amended in May 2006, but the results have remained far from being satisfactory.

Many of the girl children in care homes are victims of trafficking and are able to narrate their past with enough clarity, so that efforts may be made by appropriate authority to reunite them with their natal family. But the situation is not an easy one. I have seen parents rejecting their child due to societal pressure or due to poverty, children unwilling to go back to their parents, children going back to their parents only to be re-trafficked and children running away from the care homes and voluntarily entering the trade.

It is time that we should start seriously considering the future of these girl children at care homes. Where lies their future and how that future should be achieved, are questions that have to be answered urgently.