Trafficking Of Women And Children

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Human Trafficking is a grave violation of Human Rights, rampant in Pakistan and India, and is in today's day and age often referred to as modern day slavery. The most vulnerable victims of trafficking are women and children [1] ; who are exploited for forced labour and sexual purposes, each year. It is a crime second only to drug trafficking, earning billions of dollars and fast becoming a global issue that is posing a serious threat to security.

Pakistan and India are a source, transit, and destination country for women and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically for forced labor and prostitution. The most common form of trafficking in Pakistan and India is bonded labor, in areas of agriculture brick making, mining and carpet-making. Even though Pakistan and India have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) [1979] in 2000 and the Convention on the Rights of Children (CRC) [1989] in 1990 and 1992, respectively, cases of trafficking are still reported.

The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons [2] Â has provided three constituent elements of trafficking in persons. The act of trafficking requires ‘recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons’ done by ‘means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or vulnerability’ or the giving or receiving of payments or benefits of the victim, the purpose being to exploit the victim. Exploitation may include prostitution or any other forms of sexual servitude, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery or the removal of organs [3] . The definition above has provided an idea of the forms trafficking can take.

The legal frameworks of India and Pakistan have attempted to incorporate the International laws mentioned above in domestic laws to prohibit and penalise the act of human trafficking.

India has prohibited trafficking in its Constitution. The Articles found in the Fundamental Rights in Part III and Directive Principles of State Policy in Part IV have addressed trafficking related issues. The articles have specifically prohibited trafficking and forced labour [4] and highlighted that vulnerable groups i.e. children be given special protection. [5] Similarly, Immoral Traffic Prevention Act [6] (ITPA) also addresses the issue of trafficking. However, the act couples the issue of trafficking and prostitution or has not provided a definition of trafficking and hence an amendment has been proposed. Even though, it does penalize trafficking of women and children for commercial sexual exploitation it overlooks the fact that women and children are trafficked for forced marriages, labour and trapped in to domestic servitude.

India has a number of other legislations that directly or indirectly deal with trafficking and the forms it takes as detailed in the 2000 Protocol [7] . These legislations can be found in the Indian Penal Code [8] which has penalized buying and selling of humans and minors, forced labour and marriages, slavery and bondage [9] .

Similarly Pakistan too provides for the prohibition of certain forms of trafficking in the Pakistan Penal Code. These prohibit forced labour, slavery, servitude, buying or selling of minors and adults for prostitution, forced marriages, importing and exporting of human beings and kidnappings. [10] Furthermore, the Prevention & Control of Human Trafficking Ordinance (PACHTO) [2002] has been legislated, which is an instrument attempting to overcome the issue of trafficking and the US in its Annual Trafficking of Persons Report [11] has ranked Pakistan as a Tier 2 [12] country as far as trafficking is concerned. This is seen as a progress towards combating trafficking in Pakistan. Moreover, PACHTO addresses measures of protecting victims specifically the vulnerable groups i.e. women and children too.

Legal framework designed to combat trafficking in both these countries has severe flaws. The definitions of trafficking provided in the countries’ legislation are contentions. Legal technician’s face the problem of weak language and the Pakistani Act does not include all the forms trafficking can take namely organ trafficking and forced marriages. Furthermore, NGOs reports state that Pakistan "lacks a detailed legal framework concerning child protection issues on trafficking, sexual abuse and domestic labour." [13] 

Moreover, despite the existence of relevant statutes and legislations, the Stanford Human Trafficking Report: India states that the Indian legal framework is inconsistent; there is large scale corruption, an overly burdened judiciary and weak protection services for victims. There are obstacles in the implementation of laws. There are active attempts are made to implement laws, however, the penalties posed are not a good enough deterrent for traffickers to stop trafficking. Pakistan too faces the same inherent problems in the effectiveness of its anti human trafficking laws.

Evidence shows that hundreds of children are victims of trafficking in India and a ‘decision to introduce the new Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition) Act was taken last August shortly after the Observer and the BBA exposed the scale of the problem by staging the first successful raid on a train carrying trafficked child laborers to Delhi’ reported in The Guardian. However, the Guardian, Observer has also reported that this act may be dropped by the Parliament and debates regarding this are underway.

In order to combat this menace, it is essential that the forms and causes of trafficking are analysed also. The most frequent outcome of human trafficking is forced labour. Forced labour refers to situations where individuals are forced to provide services or work against their will or involuntarily under a threat of some sort of punishment [14] . As cited above, the Convention of the Rights of Children not only ‘prohibits trafficking but also states that forced labour of children is prohibited [15] . Children who are victims of forced labour will usually be under the stipulated legal age for work and be exploited in the drug or sex trade, agricultural activities, forced to toil in sweatshops, mines or fisheries for very long hours. Trafficked children often fall prey to becoming child soldiers that is clearly prohibited [16] and girls are exploited for providing sexual services to adult combatants and for their services as domestic workers.

Furthermore, trafficked persons, mostly women, are often hired from Pakistan and India to provide domestic and care taking services in developed locations such as Europe, United States or Middle Eastern Countries. These countries are developed and often held to be protectors of human rights; these countries have deplorable legal protection for women and children who work as domestic servants. These vulnerable groups are compelled to take occupations as domestic workers or providing child care services as nannies or governesses by threats and force exerted on them by the employers. Quite often the employers take advantage of these women and children by confiscating their documents and passports which reduces these people to toil relentlessly for the employers in the fear of being caught by the police and facing deportation. On arrival to destination countries these individuals are victims of long hours of work, low wages, unhealthy working conditions, poor health facilities, sexual assault and beatings by their employers. The 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report provides evidence from NGO reports that explain how girls are misled from North East India with promises of jobs and then forcing them into prostitution as well as forced marriages. [17] 

Moreover, it is common to see debt bondage in Pakistan and India which is explicitly linked to trafficking of women and children. Debt bondage involves a debt that cannot be paid off in a reasonable time the employer via artificial ways inflates the amount of debt, often adding exorbitant interest rates, deducting little or nothing from the debt and increasing the amount of time the debtor must work. Debt bandage is a common form of trafficking found in Nepal, Pakistan and India.

Women and children who are victims of debt bondage in the context of trafficking experience this where traffickers provide travelling assistance to women including illegal border crossing with the promise of better employment opportunities. However, these women and children are usually unaware that they are being traded for commercial sex work [18] . These traffickers require the children and women to work to pay off the debt they owe. However, the victims are unable to pay off their debts and often their debts keep increasing leaving them prey to these predators. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that their travel documents have been confiscated and often employers or traffickers resort to threats or violence against the victims or their families. More so, it is often the case that children become indebted to their parents employers, where parents die before repaying the debt and consequently the employers or traffickers insist that the children work to repay the debt. Such debt bondage may exist for generations and hence trafficking is also viewed as modern day slavery.

Trafficking women and children for commercial sex trade is also a common form of trafficking. Trafficking for sexual exploitation is seen as violation of numerable rights of women and children, their ‘right to liberty’ [19] and ‘right to dignity’ [20] being the foremost violation of human rights. Coupled with these are breach of Articles 34 of CRC and article 6 of CEDAW, whereby young girls and women are trafficked and forced in to prostitution by means of coercion or threat. Sex trafficking is also linked to debt bondage; hence these children and women are ultimately stuck in a vicious cycle of debt and have to face exploitation and abuse to buy themselves the freedom. The horror stories of trafficked women and children are innumerable; one such is the story of Anis Begum. "Anis Begum, 27, an almost destitute mother-of-four from Hyderabad, southern India, said she had paid 10,000 rupees (£120) to an agent to go to Saudi Arabia after being promised well-paid work as a maid. Instead, she was locked in a storeroom and then sold as a sex worker at an auction for the equivalent of £300, beaten, imprisoned and abused." [21] 

Another fast growing form of trafficking is that of organ removal. There are instances where traffickers force or deceive the victims into giving up an organ or vulnerable women and children are deceived in to getting treated for a problem, that may or may not exist during which organs are removed without the victim. Organs commonly removed are kidneys, hearts and liver or any organ which can be removed and used, could be the subject of such illegal trade.

Human trafficking is thriving on vulnerability of the victim and one on of the root causes of is often poverty. An individual in desperate times is willing to seek different methods of survival for himself and his family and is thus an easy target for traffickers. Even though the causes can be social, economic or political eventually all lead to poor living conditions of the victims. Factors that are contributing towards the increase in trafficking of women and children in Pakistan and India are complex and inter linked. The economical boom in both these countries has increased demand for cheap labour, lack of efficient legislative measures, deception and the thriving concept of sex tourism has increased trafficking. Amongst the main contributing factors are demand and supply, globalisation and lack of legal immigration policies.

The forces of demand and supply play an integral part in human trafficking. Traffickers get involved in act of trafficking to fulfill high demands of women and children of the employers in the fields of labour and providing sexual services. The growth of sex tourism in countries such as Netherlands and Thailand has increased the demand for young girls and women and low employment opportunities’ for women in the subcontinent has increased trafficking. Furthermore, growing trends of using children as child jockeys has also contributed to the trafficking of children from Pakistan to the Middle East [22] .

The millennium is known as the age of globalization, where it is bringing in brighter prospects for individual it has also caused a notable increase in the numbers of women and children being trafficked. The vulnerable groups of society, primarily women and children, are often deceived and trafficked for sexual purposes or involuntary domestic servitude. Furthermore, there has been an increase in demand for cheap labour in developing and developed countries and thus, individuals with low employment opportunities’ in home countries fall prey to trafficking rings. India and Pakistan are known to be patriarchal societies with young girls given lesser economic opportunities’ and usually socialized to be submissive. Suffering from such inequalities on society women tend to be lured in to the idea of migrating to an unknown country in search of work and trying to provide a helping hand towards the family expenses. However, they are usually tricked by traffickers who end up being trapped find no means of escape.

Stringent migration rules do not allow individuals aspiring to migrate abroad to do so legally, hence these people become victims of trafficking. Traffickers exploit such aspirations of individuals and seize their papers fraudulently and consequently victims are trafficked for illegal purposes and face misery.

India and Pakistan need to revamp the legislative system and ensure that compliance to the International measures is done effectively. There should be speedy amendments to the statutes of the system and the debate around shelving the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition) Act in India will only weaken the legislative framework. Moreover, Pakistan and India should work towards improving the definition of trafficking, to provide a more comprehensive legal system, preferably adopting the definition as provided in the Protocol [23] . The PACHTO (Pakistan) should also be amended by incorporating all possible forms of trafficking and increase the enforcement mechanisms for the provisions of the Bonded Labor System (Abolition) Act (BLSA) [24] . It is essential that awareness about the issue of trafficking be increased in both the countries especially to the vulnerable groups. Trafficking of women and children is a serious violation of fundamental rights and hence, in interest of these groups immediate measures should be incorporated into the legislative mechanisms of the countries.

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