World Day against Trafficking in Persons 2023

For Prelims: UNODC, Blue Heart campaign, Mission Vatsalya Scheme
For Mains: Human Trafficking, Organised Crime,

Why in News?

• Number of trafficked kids went up after pandemic; UP,Bihar,Andhra on top : study

What is Human Trafficking?

• Human Trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people through force, fraud or deception for exploitation.

UNODC

• The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) was established in 1997, originally as the Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention. It adopted its current name in 2002.
• The headquarters of UNODC is in Vienna, Austria.
• The agency’s main focus areas are illicit trafficking and abuse of drugs, crime preventionand criminal justice, international terrorism, and political corruption.
• UNODC publishes the annual World Drug Report, providing comprehensive information on the international drug situation.
• The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) publishes a Global Report on Trafficking in Persons
• According to UNODC, the criminal justice response to trafficking has slowed, with detection rates dropping 11 percent and conviction rates dropping 27 percent in recent years.

Human Trafficking

• The theme of World Day against Trafficking in Persons 2023 is “Reach every victim of trafficking, leave no one behind”.

• Eight children were trafficked every day in India n 2021 — for labour, begging and sexual exploitation — per data from the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, 2,189 cases of human trafficking were filed in 2022, involving 6,533 victims.

NCRB

• The National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) is an Indian Government agency responsible for collecting and analyzing, crime data as defined by the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Special and Local Laws (SLL).
• NCRB is headquartered in New Delhi and is part of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Government of India.
• NCRB was set-up in 1986 to function as a repository of information on crime and criminals so as to assist the investigators in linking crime to the perpetrators.

NCRB brings out three annual reports:

• Crime in India,
• Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India and
• Prison Statistics India.

Organized Crime

• Structured Group
• Commit Sevious Crime
• Finances gains

Poverty: Many people in India are living in poverty, and they may be lured into trafficking by promises of a better life.
Gender inequality: Women and girls are especially vulnerable to trafficking, as they are often seen as less valuable than men.
Lack of education: Many people in India do not have access to education, which can make them more susceptible to trafficking.
Corrupt law enforcement: In some cases, law enforcement officials may be complicit in trafficking, or they may be unable or unwilling to stop it.
Demand for cheap labor: There is a demand for cheap labor in India, and traffickers may exploit this demand by trafficking people into forced labor.

Measures

A. Constitutional

Trafficking in Human Beings or Persons is prohibited under the Constitution of India under Article 23 (1)
Article 24 forbids the employment of children below the age of 14 years in dangerous jobs like factories and mines

Prohibition of traffic in human beings and forced labour

• Article 23(1): Traffic in human beings and the beggar and other similar forms of forced labour are prohibited and an contravention of this provision shall be an offence punishable in accordance with the law.
• Article 23(2): Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from imposing compulsory service for public purposes, and in imposing such service the State shall not make any discrimination on grounds only of religion, race, caste or class or any of them.

B. Legal

• Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act (ITPA): The Government of India penalizes trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation through the ITPA, with a prescribed penalty of seven years’ to life imprisonment.
• Bonded Labour Abolition Act, Child Labour Act, and Juvenile Justice Act: These acts prohibit bonded and forced labour in India.
• Sections 366(A) and 372 of the Indian Penal Code: These sections prohibit kidnapping and selling minors into prostitution respectively. Penalties under these provisions are a maximum of ten years’ imprisonment and a fine.
• Section 370 and 370A of Indian Penal Code (IPC) provide for comprehensive measures to counter the menace of human trafficking including trafficking of children for exploitation in any form including physical exploitation or any form of sexual exploitation, slavery, servitude, or the forced removal of organs

C. Iniliatives

• Anu-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs):
  • AHTU, an integrated task force, was set up in 2007. The force draws personnel from the police and other related departments, with funding by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.
• Anti Trafficking Cell (ATC):
  • It was set up in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in 2006 to act as a focal point for communicating various decisions and following up on action taken by the State Governments to combat the crime of Human Trafficking.
• Women help desks:
  • These were established in 10,000 police stations across the country.
  • MHA has provided financial assistance under “Nirbhaya Fund” to all States and Union
  • Territories (UTs), including the North-Eastern States and Assam.
  • A pan India Drive ‘Operation AAHT’ is undertaken by RPF focused to take effective action in cases of Human Trafficking through railways.
  • National Legal Services Authority’s (NLSA) Compensation Scheme for Women Victims/Survivors of Sexual Assault/other Crimes, 2018.

International

• UN Convention: India ratified the UN Convention on Transnational Organised Crime, which includes protocols on human trafficking. The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013, specifically defining human trafficking, was enacted in India.
• SAARC Convention: India ratified the SAARC Convention on Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Women and Children for Prostitution. A Regional Task Force was formed to implement this, and a study tour was conducted for SAARC countries to learn from India’s Anti Human Trafficking Units.
• Bilateral Mechanism: A Task Force was established between India and Bangladesh to address cross-border trafficking issues, with five meetings held so far.
• Memorandum of Understanding (MoU): An MoU was signed between India and Bangladesh in June 2015 for bilateral cooperation in preventing human trafficking and assisting victims.

Issues with Investigation

• Institutional Barrier: Law enforcement agencies are often reluctant to investigate cases they think will not be prosecuted due to lack of evidence or credibility of the victim statements.
• Adequate Training: Law enforcement agencies often lack the necessary training and skills to deal with such crucial cases efficiently.
• Victims being Pigeonholed as Criminals: In many cases, trafficked individuals are labeled as criminals, which adds to their suffering.
• Language Barrier: Communication with victims, who are often transported from one country to another, can be challenging due to language barriers.
• Lack of Rehabilitation Facilities: Providing adequate shelter, medical assistance, counseling, and financial assistance is a major challenge.

Issues with Compensation

• There have been many cases of the SLSA, especially in West Bengal, claiming a lack of funds as a reason for the non-payment of compensation, and the Central Government has acknowledged that the actual payment of compensation depends upon the “amount maintained and released by the State government”.
• Central schemes like that of NALSA, mandate 75 per cent of the final compensation to be kept as fixed deposits in nationalised banks for 3-10 years, unavailable for immediate utilisation.
• The misfiling of the FIR is one of the reasons behind the DLSA awarding compensation lower than that necessary for rehabilitation of the victim.

Other issues

• Interstate Investigation Issues: The collective action platform Tafteesh, which works towards combating human trafficking, attributes the decline in conviction rate to the absence of a strong and robust mechanism to investigate human trafficking cases that often span across state borders.
• Declining Conviction Rate: The conviction rate in human trafficking cases in India has been declining over the past four years, despite an increase in the number of Anti Human Trafficking Units (AHTU) in the country to 696.
• Conviction Rate Data: The conviction rate of cases related to human trafficking dropped from 27.8% in 2016 to 10.6% in 2020
• The advent of social media has introduced a new dimension to human trafficking. Platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter are increasingly being used as tools for trafficking, yet India lacks specific laws to regulate these platforms in this context.

Challenges

• Prevailing challenges include a lack of coordination among AHTUs, disjointed operations by State and Central Governments, an absent witness protection framework, and challenges in accessing compensation.

Source: https://www.livemint.com/news/india/world-day-against-trafficking-in-persons-2023-date-history-significance-theme-and-more-11690680190077.html