India: Strengthening Safety Nets to Counter Human Trafficking
United Nations Office on Drugs and CrimeSix days a week, ten-year-old Anima treks one kilometer to the only
primary school in her village, in the border area of India adjoining
Bangladesh. She walks barefoot with a torn satchel slung over her
shoulders. Her father breaks stones in a nearby quarry while her motherworks in the paddy fields. Anima is accompanied by her five-year-old sister. Braving the scorching heat, stone-filled roads and dust, they reach theirschool. The classroom is tiny and there are only two windows, an old table, a chair and a makeshift blackboard. Around a hundred eager children
aged between five and twelve years attend class in this one room. Attending
school may be an ordinary scene in cities, but in this remote village, it is aremarkable feat.
The children sit on the floor with books open on their laps and listen
to the senior headmaster, who is from Kolkata, India. The headmaster dedicates all his time to helping the children stay in school and complete theireducation and, most importantly, to talk to them about human trafficking,why it occurs, its cause, who are the potential victims and how to take preventive steps.
The headmaster explains, “There have been several reported cases inthis village, where girls as young as five years of age have been trafficked
or sold by families. They become victims of sexual and labor exploitationin West Bengal. Approximately 7,000 girls and women are trafficked from
Bangladesh to West Bengal annually. If we are to stop this crime, we haveto teach them about human trafficking from the earliest age so that they do
not become victims”.
Anima is the head girl of the class. Standing tall in front of her classmates, she urges them to recite in chorus a short poem in the local language.
The poem centers around the heinous crime of human trafficking and how
children are vulnerable but not helpless to act. In addition, Anima explainsto the class “We should refuse to speak to strangers, especially men. If heoffers us sweets and lures us with tales of a good life, we should report thisto our elders or the police. Traffickers lure children like us. We are sold tobrothels, sexually exploited and abused. We are forced to work in houses
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and factories with no food and no money. This is not what we want. We
want to be educated and aware.” The room fills up with claps.
“The children are always the best teachers,” adds the headmaster. He believes they are in a good position to help spread information on these issues
and raise awareness among the whole community. Such initiatives, where
life-saving messages are built into the education curriculum, help children
grow safely and wisely in a world fraught with danger.
This initiative was undertaken by atsec (Action against Trafficking
and Sexual Exploitation of Children), a network of over five hundred nongovernmental organizations (ngos) operating mainly in India with chaptersin Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, as part of their community
policing intervention along the India-Bangladesh border. Peer groups fromsixteen schools in the Basirhat sub division of the North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal state were formed, consisting of school teachers andstudents, from the primary, secondary and senior schools. Through discussions, posters, films and other education-communication tools, they weretrained to educate each other on human trafficking and how to protect
themselves from being trafficked. India faces both internal trafficking andcross border trafficking from the neighboring countries of Bangladesh and
Nepal. India and Bangladesh share borders for thousands of miles, posing achallenge to law enforcement authorities to maintain vigilance over movements across the border. Illegal entries by traffickers, from Bangladesh into
West Bengal in India, are common. The trafficked victims are usually kept in
the border areas for few days and then sold to local traffickers, who in turnsend them to different parts of the country or outside the country.
To bring together all stakeholders in the community and strengthen thesafety net against this crime, atsec has been advocating the idea of community policing - a philosophy and an organizational strategy that encourages
the police and community to work closely together to address the problemsof crime and social disorder. The philosophy rests on the belief that lawabiding people in the community deserve to input into the police process.
It also rests on the belief that solutions to contemporary problems demand
freeing both citizens and the police to explore creative, new ways to addressneighborhood concerns beyond a narrow focus on individual incidents ofcrime. It uses different approaches, such as foot patrol and problem-solving
at the neighborhood level.

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Under its community policing initiative in West Bengal, atsec India
oriented the police and the Border Security Force (bsf) on human trafficking and law enforcement. It also trained members of the community, including school children, teachers, village council members, local ngos, hoteliers,
bus conductors and others. It regularly organized field level discussions in
tea stalls, courtyards and even during village assembly meetings. Today, theentire community is more aware about the dangers of human trafficking.
They work together in the border areas to ensure that any trafficker whobrings women and girls is apprehended with the help of the police or BSF.
Mr Manabendra Mandal, Chairman, atsec South Asia affirms, “Developing
and strengthening community policing is essential to combat trafficking.
Community policing gives us hope that we can prevent cross-border trafficking and also bring traffickers to book, so that they can be punished by
the appropriate court of law”. This initiative was supported by the United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Regional Office for South Asia (unodcrosa).
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (unodc) has been established as the Principal United Nations (UN) agency to deal with the global challenges of drug trafficking and other forms of transnational organizedcrime, such as human trafficking, smuggling of migrants, firearms trafficking and terrorism. Unodc also works to address corruption and to ensure
the implementation of universally accepted criminal justice standards, suchas the fair treatment of prisoners. Unodc’s mandates are enshrined in five
UN conventions like the UN Convention against Transnational Organized
Crime and its three Protocols on Trafficking in Persons, on Smuggling of
Migrants by Land, Sea and Air and on Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking
in Firearms; the three UN Conventions on drugs; the UN Convention
against Corruption, and the universal instruments against terrorism. These
treaties and UN resolutions lay out comprehensive approaches to deal withthe above mentioned issues that pose serious threats to human security andjustice. With its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, unodc operates in morethan one hundred fifty countries around the world through its network offield offices. Unodc is present in South Asia since 1988, with its regional office based in New Delhi, India. The Office covers Bangladesh, Bhutan, India,
Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
Unodc’s work primarily rests on three pillars: research; efforts to implement the international conventions; and capacity-building operations in

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the field. These three pillars are critical to unodc’s role in assisting Member
States to formulate and implement policies. It is also worth emphasizingthat at the core of unodc mandates is a commitment to human rights, tothe construction of effective, transparent and accountable systems of criminal justice, and to a preventive approach to protect individuals, families andcommunities from drug addiction and hiv, from being trafficked or smuggled, from being abused by corrupt practices and harmed by terrorism.
In its role as guardian of the Convention against Transnational organized Crime, unodc helps governments create the domestic legal frameworks needed to investigate criminal offences and adopt new frameworks
for extradition, mutual legal assistance and international law enforcement
cooperation, enabling States to tackle organized crime, prosecute and convict offenders, and assist and protect victims and witnesses. The Protocol
to Prevent, Suppress and Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women andChildren is the major international legal instrument for combating humantrafficking. Human rights measures, for example, aim to protect victims
but lack effective law enforcement mechanisms to deal with traffickers. The
Protocol, however, takes a comprehensive approach, attempting to safeguard victims while improving control measures to investigate, prosecuteand punish offenders.
Unodc’s Response to Human Trafficking in South Asia
In South Asia, human trafficking1 is often referred to as one of the fastest
growing transnational organized crimes. Over 150,000 people are traffickedwithin South Asia every year for sex work, labor, forced marriages, andorgan trade. It is often the very poor economic conditions that contributeto the vulnerabilities of young people, women and children. Countries inSouth Asia serve as prominent origin, transit and destination countries for
women, children and men being trafficked. In South Asia, the largest numbers of women trafficked are within or from the region, and child trafficking
is a serious concern. Most of the trafficking takes place for commercial sexual exploitation where women are being forced into unprotected sexual actswith multiple partners. In addition, there has also been a growing demandfor domestic help at a time when human labor is becoming expensive. For
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and villagers often willingly turn their children over to middlepersons who
promise them a better life in cities.
Human trafficking threatens human security and hinders human development. It has an economic angle as a majority of the victims are economically vulnerable. It has a social and a gender angle, as unequal power relations in society makes certain people more vulnerable to human trafficking.
It is a crime, as victims are stripped of their human rights and often lack access to redressal for the crimes committed against them. Human trafficking
also has a strong health angle, particularly as victims who are trafficked forcommercial sexual exploitation are at risk of hiv and other sexually transmitted infections.
In South Asia, unodc in collaboration with governments and civil society partners provides technical assistance for various interventions designed to address human trafficking in the region with a focus on three Ps.
The three Ps stand for the prevention of trafficking crimes, protection of
victims of human trafficking, thereby ensuring rehabilitation of survivors
and the restitution of their rights and the prosecution all the offenders, conspirators and abettors.
Prevention: Empowering Communities to Address Human Trafficking
Prevention activities, through awareness generation and education, play a
key role in protecting individuals who are potentially at risk of being trafficked. For this unodc develops Information Education Communication(iec) materials which are distributed among partner ngos in the geographical areas of intervention, for further dissemination and awareness among
the target population. Prevention also constitutes research activities, in order to understand both the scope as well as the nature of trafficking in theaffected areas. The third form of prevention involves the development ofsocial and economic interventions which offer support to those potentiallyat risk of being trafficked. Some of the activities include job skills training programs to promote local employment opportunities; empowerment
programs to develop self-confidence, especially in children and assist themin developing their careers; community enrichment programs to discourage out-migration; and crisis intervention programs to provide support for
women and children in abusive homes or facing other crises that might otherwise push them to migrate.

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For instance, as part of one of its India-based interventions, unodc inpartnership with an ngo, supported initiatives in Jharkhand (a high source
state for trafficking in India), to impart livelihood skills to women from tribal communities. To this end, nearly one hundred seventy-five young women,
many of whom are also survivors of trafficking from tribal communities of
Jharkhand, were provided training to become security guards and housekeeping staff. These young women have been placed at various government
and private institutions across the country and have become ‘role models’for other similar women in their community. This intervention has not only
provided trafficked women and girls access to secure jobs, but also helped
them regain their lost confidence.
Similarly, at Kishanganj district, in the state of Bihar (another highsource state for trafficking), unodc supported an ngo to strengthen community vigilance and impart livelihood skills. Through sensitization trainings for the community, the ngo has created awareness about trafficking,child and fake marriages in the area. So far, one hundred two village vigilance committees and fifty-five self-help groups have been formed to counter trafficking. The ngo, through its vigilance committees has been successful in preventing two hundred thirty-three fake marriages and one hundred
eight child marriages. It has also prevented two hundred twenty-two boys
and girls from becoming child labourers. Additionally, two hundred nine
women who were victims of domestic violence were counselled and fifteen
trafficked victims have been sent to their homes. Through street theater, amedium of communication which is easily understood by all the people, thengo has been able to reach out to nearly 65,000 villagers with key messages
on human trafficking and how to prevent it.
Additionally, unodc through its partner network reaches out to its
stakeholders in South Asia through various initiatives like orientation andsensitization programs for policy-makers, police officers, judiciary, government officials, women and children in distress including trafficked womenand children; training needs analysis for different target groups (police, border security force, media, local self governments, ngos); facilitation of rescue operations and advocacy with national and international organizations
on trafficking issues.

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Protection: Rehabilitation and Support for Survivors of Human Trafficking
Recovery of trafficked persons is a long and complex process. A core element of unodc’s mandate under the UN Trafficking Protocol is to increase
the level of protection and assistance provided to survivors of human trafficking. After a trafficked person is rescued, the man, woman or child should
be protected, during their stay in shelter homes/vigilance homes, before reintegrating them into the society. Sometimes, this re-integration may not
be the right answer, since it may place them back into the same scenario
from which s/he had tried to escape earlier, continuing their earlier vulnerability. Thus, protection activities, especially of women and children require
enhancing their life skills, re-building their emotional structures, providingthem with some basic skills with which they can eke out a living once out
in the world again. Police and criminal justice staff need standard working
procedures to guarantee the physical safety of victims, protect their privacy
and make it safe for them to testify against their abusers. Protection also
involves ensuring that the shelter homes are safe and meet the needs of trafficked persons - that they have access to primary health care and counseling,along with legal and other assistance, and that they are effectively protectedfrom harm, threats or intimidation, and so on.
In India, unodc provides livelihood and psychosocial support to survivors of trafficking in shelter homes, especially women and children. It also
strives to ensure quality care and support services to victims of human trafficking, in close collaboration with state governments and ngos.
As part of its interventions with women living in shelter homes, unodc
in collaboration with the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro
Sciences (nimhans), a premier mental health institute in India, supported
trainings for over seven hundred caregivers from government-run shelter
homes for women in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil
Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, on minimum standards for care and protection
and psycho-social support. The caregivers were trained on issues of selfesteem and emotional intelligence while dealing with women and children,
addressing inter-personal relationships in the shelter home and even dealing with their own feelings as caregivers. They were also motivated to adopt
stress management techniques apart from orienting them to child andwomen’s rights. Family counselling was introduced in the women’s home toensure a better reintegration of women into their families and society, along

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H u m a n R i g h t s E d u c at i o n i n A s i a - Pa c i f i cwith counseling sessions for young women. Unodc is further collaborating with nimhans, Bangalore, to develop a manual titled, “Psycho-social
care for women in institutions”, which will be used as resource material forcapacity-building of staff working in institutions for women in India. The
overall aim is to improve care and protection for women in shelter homes,by laying down concrete intervention strategies.
Unodc also initiated a project titled ‘‘Reducing Children’s Vulnerability
to Abuse and Rehabilitation of Survivors’’ to provide quality care and support services to vulnerable children at risk of physical and sexual abuse andto provide comprehensive rehabilitation opportunities to trafficking survivors. The initiative was aimed at strengthening community structures andbuilding institutional capacity of non-governmental and governmental organizations working with children, and initiate training on child protection
for care providers. Unodc, through its engagement with the Ministry of
Women and Child Development at the Centre and state governments ofTamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka provided psycho-social training to more than 650 care givers from government
run children’s (including juvenile homes) homes. This was done to enablecare-givers to understand the needs and emotions of children who needcare and protection.
In the state of Tamil Nadu, with an aim to understand the psycho-social
needs of children (including those with mental disabilities), unodc is supporting an organization in partnership with nimhans to conduct a quick
assessment and develop a model to enhance the quality of life of children
living in government-run children’s homes—to assess their psycho-social
condition, to identify children with mental health problems and start earlyintervention. This initiative has been appreciated since it addressed an areathat is usually neglected—the mental health of children in shelter homes.
In a first of its kind program, more than four hundred children fromgovernment-run shelter homes in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh
were provided career guidance counseling, many of whom were juvenile delinquents from broken homes, victims of alcoholic parents and had enduredvarious kinds of abuse. This training enhanced the self-esteem of children,
helped them understand the options available to them and thereby choose
their disciplines of study based on self interest.
As part of its efforts to strengthen victim/witness protection, unodc
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port nearly four hundred witnesses/victims with the aim of protecting themfrom being coerced into withdrawing her/ his evidence, and with the following envisaged outcomes: increased conviction of traffickers, increased number of witnesses attending court, increase in charge sheets filed, reduction
in instances of re-trafficking, reduced adjournments and speedy disposal ofcases. In addition to that, the ngo was supported to provide training to the
judiciary to ensure speedy disposal of cases, thereby reducing the chances oftraffickers going free without punishment. As a result, the conviction rate oftraffickers and brothel keepers in the state has increased.
Prosecution: Strengthening Law Enforcement for the Preventionof Human Trafficking
Much of unodc’s work centers on strengthening criminal justice responses
to human trafficking. It helps countries to develop effective law enforcement and criminal justice institutions and legislation to combat trafficking
in persons, effectively.
Between 2006 and 2009, unodc, in collaboration with the Ministry ofHome Affairs, Government of India implemented a project that aimed tostrengthen the technical capacities of law enforcement agencies and officers in India to prevent trafficking in human beings. Over a three year period more than 13,490 police officers and prosecutors were trained throughthree hundred ninety training programs in the five project states - Bihar,West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Goa. Eight Nodal Training
Centers (ntcs) were established in all the project states. The ntcs started
imparting training to law enforcement officials on a regular basis and havealso been assisting ngos who conduct trainings on human trafficking.
A highlight of the project was the establishment of nine Anti-Human
Trafficking Units (ahtus) in the four project states of Andhra Pradesh,
Bihar, Goa and West Bengal. An ahtu is a special Task Force, constituted
within the Police department with the partnership of several stakeholders,
including officials from the departments of prosecution, welfare and health,agencies that run shelter, protective and children’s homes, as well as fromcivil society partners and the media. The ahtus also seek to strengthen inter-departmental collaboration among the police and all other government
agencies and departments, such as women and child, labor, health, etc.

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The combination of ahtus and trained law enforcement officials has
contributed to an increased awareness and knowledge of the issue, skill enhancement, inter-agency coordination, and better victim/witness protection. The training material/knowledge products prepared on anti-humantrafficking (Training Manuals, Standard Operating Procedures, Posters
and the Training Curriculum) have been widely disseminated to law enforcement personnel during the national training programs and to training
academies for institutionalization. The Government of India has also appreciated the knowledge products and has advised the States to carry out
training programs utilizing these Manuals/ Standard Operating Procedures/
Compendiums and other training tools. In response to the demand for
documents to be made available in vernacular languages, all the knowledge
products have been translated into the national language, Hindi for dissemination in the North Indian States.
Considering the rationale and efficacy of the ahtu as the appropriate
model to address human trafficking in a holistic and comprehensive manner, the Government of India issued an advisory to all the states in India
to institutionalize the gains made by the project in two important areas:(a) Training of trainers on anti-human trafficking and (b) Setting up AntiHuman Trafficking Units (ahtus). Work to this end has already begun,
with over 50 ahtus being functional across the country to date.
Joint UN Initiatives to Address Human Trafficking in South Asia
On 1 July 2010 the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India launched a
National Code of Conduct on Safe and Honorable Tourism for the country.
This code was a result of a collaborative effort of the Government of India,
unodc, the Pacific Asia Tourism Association (pata) and Save the Children
India, and initiated under the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight
Human Trafficking (un.gift). The un.gift is a joint initiative of different
UN and international agencies to address human trafficking at a global level.
The Code of Conduct lays down a set of guidelines for the travel andtourism industry to ensure that all tourism activities in India protect the
dignity, safety and right to freedom from exploitation of both tourists andthe local population. The Code is of immense significance to India, as it is adominant tourist destination in the South Asian region as well as an emerging international one with an estimated arrival of more than five million

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tourists per year. While tourism has opened up new business opportunities
all over the country, instances of crimes and human right violations in connection with tourism, especially relating to the commercial sexual exploitation of children and women as well as to human trafficking have also cometo raise questions about - inter alia - the image of the tourism industry. In
the light of this, the Code forms a strong basis for joint commitment andorganized action by the government, tour operators and other stakeholdersof the tourism sector to maintain proper standards and an honorable image.
On 27 September 2010, World Tourism Day, nearly two hundred fifty members of the tourism fraternity along with the Hon’ble Minister ofTourism and other officials came together in New Delhi to sign a pledge,
thereby agreeing to abide by the Code. In addition, the Ministry of Tourism
has also revised the national criteria for classification and approval of tour
and travel companies, integrating points from the national Code. Therefore,
companies are now encouraged to follow the provisions of the Code of
Conduct in order to move from one level of classification to another or for
approval of new businesses.
Moving ahead, the Ministry is keen to focus on training and capacity
building of stakeholders from the tourism sector like hotel staff, tour companies, taxi drivers, etc and generating awareness about safe and honorable
tourism through a mass communication campaign. It is envisaged that two
persons of every hotel or tour operating company will be appointed as focal
points to monitor that all norms and guidelines of the Code are respected
and adhered to.
Under the vision of increased joint UN cooperation, unifem andunodc have committed themselves to address human trafficking issues
collaboratively by thinking, planning and implementing programs together. Under a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between unifem andunodc with regard to the South Asian countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan,
India, Nepal, Maldives and Sri Lanka, unodc and unifem have commissioned a ‘Legal and Policy Review of Response to Human Trafficking inIndia, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka’ with an aim to highlight the gaps
in legislative, policy and institutional responses to human trafficking. The
findings will help the four countries move closer to the provisions of theuntoc and the Trafficking in Persons Protocol. In this context, unodc inassociation with atsec India, organized for the first time in South Asia athree-day regional workshop on “International Cooperation in Trafficking

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in Persons/Smuggling of Migrants Cases” in Kolkata, India in March 2010.
The workshop brought together officers and representatives from the executive and the judiciary power in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal
and Sri Lanka, including police officers, prosecutors, judges and senior government officials, representatives from the International Justice Mission(ijm), International Organization for Migration (iom), unifem, atsec andunodc experts in legal and criminal justice matters.
Currently, unodc, in collaboration with iom is developing a joint regional program to strengthen criminal justice responses to human trafficking in four countries of South Asia, namely, Bangladesh, Nepal, India
and Sri Lanka. This program aims to strengthen responses of criminal justice actors, namely, the judiciary, public prosecutors and police officials to
trafficking in persons in South Asia. Through a series of capacity-building
and training programs, the project will, over a three-year period, raise theawareness of law enforcement officers, (i.e., police and public prosecutors)
and judicial officers on the problem of human trafficking. The program aims
to increase the number of cases filed in crimes of human trafficking and tobetter investigate and prosecute offenders perpetrating these crimes. It will
also work on the development of tools for beneficiary countries on the basis of their identified needs, thus providing them with means to effectively
self-implement their domestic laws. This, in turn, aims at further developing cross-border co-operation in identification of victims, investigation, victim - witness protection measures, repatriation of victims and extraditionof criminals, through bilateral mechanisms between beneficiary countries.
Endnote
1. The United Nations Protocol on Trafficking defines human trafficking as:•
The recruitment, transportation, transfer or receipt of persons, by meansof coercion, abduction, deception, or abuse of power or of the exchange of
payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person for the purpose of
exploitation.
•
Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal oforgans.
To know more about unodc South Asia, visit www.unodc.org/southasia.