Fourth Place In Global Slavery Index, But Still No Anti-Trafficking Bill

It’s not only in the Olympics that we’ve got fourth place.

WrittenBy:Shaifali Agrawal
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Nisha*, 21, from West Bengal, had just filed a dowry complaint and domestic violence case against her husband and his family when a lucrative job offer came her way in April 2011. What she hadn’t realised was that the job offer was a decoy for trafficking. Her father tried to file a complaint that she was missing, but the police dismissed him. She’d probably run off somewhere, with someone, they figured. After seven days of being trapped in a small room with many other girls, Nisha was rescued by a social worker along with the police. An First Information Report (FIR) was filed only when she returned home after 3 three months of staying in a shelter home. The case was registered with the police six months after the FIR was filed. More than a year later, in December 2013, there was still no chargesheet.

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Historically, trafficking has been dealt with come under various laws and acts, Section 370 of the Indian Penal Code  deals with trafficking for the purpose of exploitation; Sections 372 and 373, with selling and buying girls for prostitution respectively; Section; 366 A, with procurement of minor girls;, and Section 366 B, with importing girls from foreign countries. Other laws such as Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act (ITPA), Protection of Children Against Sexual Offences Act, Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act, Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act can also be used to tackle trafficking.

Despite Yet as Nisha’s case shows, despite all these laws, trafficking has proved difficult to monitor or curb. This is partly because of in the procedure and also because matters become complicated when there isn’t one law to tackle the problem. 

Since last year, there has been – on paper – a concerted effort to bring about new legislation that will not let traffickers and victims of trafficking slip through its cracks. However, many of those who have been officially consulted are intensely dissatisfied by how the way the law has been drafted. “If the suggestions of civil society would not be taken seriously, then we can go to the Supreme Court to oppose the bill,” said activist Triveni Acharya, who founded the Rescue Foundation in Maharashtra and was among those consulted during the drafting process of the new anti-trafficking bill.

Human trafficking is the illegal movement of people, typically for the purposes of forced labour or commercial sexual exploitation. Last November, the National Legal Services Authority (NLSA) submitted a report to the Supreme Court of India, pointing out gaps in the existing legislation that is supposed to curb trafficking. On an average, 51 out of every 100 people in India are vulnerable to modern slavery – which includes bonded labour, forced begging, forced marriage, domestic services, and commercial sex work. None of the existing laws clearly define “sexual exploitation”, “commercial sexual exploitation (CSE)”, and no provision exists for ‘prevention’ under the ITPA. As far as the existing system goes, The rehabilitation process – from shelters to therapy and vocational training for survivors – falls far short of requirement. The absence of a victim/witness protection protocol, and  flaws in the functioning and security at shelter homes are other defects of the existing system.

In response to this report, the Supreme Court then asked the Centre to bring a comprehensive law to deal with the crime. By mid-November, the cabinet secretary had constituted a high-level committee under the secretary of Women and Child Development Ministry (MWCD) to frame the proposed legislation in compliance with the court’s order. Given the importance and the scale of the new bill, an Inter-Ministerial Standing Committee was set up, involving the Law Ministry, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Women and Child Development, the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Overseas Employment and several anti-trafficking activists.   

Seven months of rigorous discussions and consultations later, MWCD released the draft of the country’s first anti-trafficking bill this May. For the first time, it deals with both sex trafficking and labour trafficking under the same legislation. Unfortunately, it was roundly criticised for lacking clearly defined key terms.What does the bill mean by ‘prevention’, ‘protection’, ‘rehabilitation’, and even ‘trafficking’? “Everything depends on the definitions. How a case is investigated depends on the specificity of the sentences and the specificity of the provisions of a law,” said Harish Bhandari, a lawyer based in Mumbai.

There is, according to activists and lawyers, a pressing need to have a legislation that will be able to tackle trafficking. “It is very much required to amend the existing law, or to introduce a new law,” said Bhandari.. “The Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act is not strong enough to reach conviction.

India currently ranks fourth in the Global Slavery Index, under North Korea, Uzbekistan and Cambodia.

As much as it is a humanitarian issue, trafficking also has an economic dimension, considering the number of people from developing nations who provide forced cheap labour under unstandardised conditions, for products sold internationally. “Western products are losing out on market simply because the products of developing nations are cheaper – since they use cheaper forms of labour,” explained Roop Sen, researcher and co-founder of a Kolkata-based NGO Sanjog, and a member of the Standing Committee and Central Advisory Committee formed to draft the bill. “Ninety per cent of India’s labour is in informal labour industry where standards of labour cannot be ensured or enforced all the time. There is a global movement by first world corporates against use of child labour in supply chain, bonded labour trafficking. The implications of this are huge, because the growth of trafficking can affect the international trade very well.”

In June, the Government invited comments on the draft of the new anti-trafficking bill and received 287 submissions from civil societies across the country. SEWA Kerala, Anti-Slavery International, Child Rights and You, MP Commission for Protection of Child Rights, Apne Aap, Sangram, Department of Women and Child Development and Social Welfare of the Govt of West Bengal, are among those others that provided extensive feedback.

This month, the bill has undergone a series consultations in Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai, on its third draft The final draft bill is expected to be brought before the Parliament this December. The discussion on the bill would take place in the next session.

Despite the status and the number of people involved, the first draft of the bill has been slammed by sociologists, researchers, social workers, lawyers, medical professionals, and psychologists working in the field for being and full of loopholes. (Only the final draft of the bill would be made public.)

“The various suggestions and recommendations provided by NGOs and civil bodies before the drafting have not been taken seriously,” said Acharya. For example, restoration and/ reintegration of the victim had been one of the issues that had been put forward by the experts. Acharya had suggested victims be given the right to live as they wanted after being rescued. However, the draft bill released says victims, after being rescued, must first be put in shelter homes, and only later with the help of district coordinator, may be sent to their respective homes. It completely ignores the experience of those who have worked with survivors of trafficking, who often feel the The shelter homes are a confinement because they’re not free to go home.

The is also very weak on the mental health of the survivor. “The government has been sensitised about the cause a little,” said Acharya, “but the bureaucrats have not taken any responsibility on themselves for the victims’ rehabilitation, etc.. If the bill comes in its present form, it won’t make much of a difference to the victims,” she added.

Crucially, there are no details regarding coordination mechanism of various agencies, and it is also silent on any and all aspects of the fund money.

The NLSA report from last year had pointed out that the  absence of a single investigating agency that will focus on trafficking and will have its own fund money is necessary. Current Anti Human Trafficking Units have to rely on the existing police for manpower, and there is no separate budget for them. The draft bill does talk of creating an Anti- Trafficking fund, but doesn’t expand on what would be the dedicated amount, where the money will come from, who will be the dispersing authority, ,  or what would be its allocation. “The bill lacks in so much detail that it is difficult to say there is anything good about this bill,” said Kaushik Gupta, an advocate with Kolkata High Court. “It is mere dead letters of law.”

“Lots of things were discussed pre-drafting, and maybe what we saw in the final draft that was presented on the 31st May was not to everybody’s happiness,” agreed Sen, “but as Ministers have said, it is a work in progress and there is a lot of room for improvement.”

The consultations on the third draft are currently underway, with experts from across sectors— researchers, academicians, sociologists, people from NGOs dealing with sex trafficking and labour trafficking, lawyers, and psychologists – having been, invited.

After the consultations the bill would be reworked on again before it goes to the parliament.

At present, some 18.3 million people in India live in conditions of “modern slavery”, according to the Global Slavery Index. While this bill has been in discussion and drafted, since 2014, 5,616 Indians have been enslaved every single day. There number of enslaved people in India has risen by 4.1 million since 2014, bringing the total number to approximately 18.3 million. People like Nisha, who remain victimised even when rescued — not by traffickers, but by the system and the fact that there isn’t a law that isn’t strong enough to promise them justice.  

*Name changed to protect identity.

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