PREVENTION
The government increased efforts to prevent trafficking. The government continued to implement its 2013-2016
national action plan, though funding gaps reportedly delayed implementation of some parts of the plan. One official
at the interior ministry devoted 20 percent of her time to coordinating the government’s anti-trafficking
efforts.The coordinator established a steering group to oversee implementation of the national action plan, which
met monthly and included representatives from law enforcement, social services, and an NGO. The steering group
prioritized awareness raising and established an education team that held 17 sessions across the country on victim
identification and referral. Approximately 300 government officials and professionals attended these meetings and
joined an email list promoting networking and knowledge sharing. Police distributed pocket checklists for
identification of victims in hotel rooms in the Sudurnes region and Iceland’s international airport.The government
demonstrated efforts to reduce demand for commercial sex acts by enforcing legislation banning the purchase of sex
and the operation of strip clubs, but it did not demonstrate efforts to reduce the demand for forced labor.The
government provided anti-trafficking training or guidance for its diplomatic personnel.
INDIA: Tier 2
India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex
trafficking. Forced labor constitutes India’s largest trafficking problem; men, women, and children in debt
bondage—sometimes inherited from previous generations—are forced to work in industries such as brick kilns, rice
mills, agriculture, and embroidery factories. Ninety percent of India’s trafficking problem is internal, and those
from the most disadvantaged social strata—lowest caste Dalits, members of tribal communities, religious minorities,
and women and girls from excluded groups—are most vulnerable. Trafficking within India continues to rise due to
increased mobility and growth in industries utilizing forced labor, such as construction, steel, textiles, wire
manufacturing for underground cables, biscuit factories, pickling, floriculture, fish farms, and boat
cutting.Thousands of unregulated work placement agencies reportedly lure adults and children for sex trafficking or
forced labor, including domestic servitude, under false promises of employment.
In addition to bonded labor, children are subjected to forced labor as factory workers, domestic servants, beggars,
and agricultural workers. Begging ring leaders sometimes maim children to earn more money. Reports indicate
conditions amounting to forced labor may be present in the Sumangali scheme in Tamil Nadu, in
which employers pay young women a lump sum to be used for a dowry at the end of a three-year term. Children,
reportedly as young as 6, are forcibly removed from their families and used by terrorist groups such as the Maoists
in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, West Bengal, and Odisha to act as spies and couriers, plant
improvised explosive devices, and fight against the government. Boys from Bihar are subjected to forced labor in
embroidery factories in Nepal. Experts estimate millions of women and children are victims of sex trafficking in
India. Children continue to be subjected to sex trafficking in religious pilgrimage centers and tourist
destinations. A large number of Nepali, Afghan, and Bangladeshi females—the majority of whom are children—and women
and girls from Asia and Eurasia are also subjected to sex trafficking in India. Prime destinations for female
trafficking victims include Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi, Gujarat, and along the India-Nepal border. Traffickers pose as
matchmakers, arranging sham marriages within India or to Gulf states, and then subject women and girls to sex
trafficking.West Bengal continues to be a source for trafficking victims, with children more increasingly subjected
to sex trafficking in small hotels, vehicles, huts, and private residences than traditional red light districts.
Some corrupt law enforcement officers protect suspected traffickers and brothel owners from enforcement of the law,
take bribes from sex trafficking establishments and sexual services from victims, and tip-off sex and labor
traffickers to impede rescue efforts.
Some Indian migrants who willingly seek employment in construction, domestic service, and other low-skilled sectors
in the Middle East and, to a lesser extent, other regions, subsequently face forced labor initiated by recruitment
fraud and extortionate recruitment fees charged by Indian labor brokers. Some Bangladeshi migrants are subjected to
forced labor in India through recruitment fraud and debt bondage. Nepali and Bangladeshi women and girls are
subjected to both labor and sex trafficking in major Indian cities. Boys from Nepal and Bangladesh are subjected to
forced labor in coal mines in the state of Meghalaya, though reportedly on a smaller scale than previous years.
Burmese Rohingya, Sri Lankan Tamil, and other refugee groups continue to be vulnerable to forced labor in
India.
The Government of India does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking;
however, it is making significant efforts to do so. The government continued to fund shelter and rehabilitation
services for women and children throughout India, trained prosecutors and judges, and upon order of the Supreme
Court, several states launched searches to trace the whereabouts of thousands of lost and abandoned children, some
of whom may have been trafficking victims. However, the government’s law enforcement progress was unknown as the
government did not provide adequate disaggregated anti- trafficking data and official complicity remained a serious
concern. The government sometimes penalized victims through arrests for crimes committed as a result of being
subjected to human trafficking. The government denied international travel to some Indian national trafficking
victims who had been identified as trafficking victims abroad by a foreign government, and their family members.
Many Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs), which liaise with other agencies and refer victims to shelters, were not
functioning and NGOs assessed that government victim care services were inconsistent and inadequate for the scale
of India’s trafficking problem.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR INDIA:
Cease the penalization of trafficking victims, including restrictions on their travel; increase prosecutions and
convictions for all forms of trafficking, including bonded labor, respecting due process, and report on these law
enforcement efforts; increase prosecutions of officials allegedly complicit in trafficking, and convict and punish
those found guilty; fully capacitate AHTUs by providing additional dedicated, trained staff and clarifying the
mandate of AHTUs; encourage AHTUs to address all forms of trafficking, including forced labor of adults and
children; improve central and state government implementation of protection programs and compensation schemes to
ensure identified trafficking victims receive benefits, release certificates, and rehabilitation funds; promptly
disburse government funding for shelters and develop monitoring mechanisms to ensure quality of care; develop and
implement standard operating procedures (SOPs) to harmonize victim identification and repatriation, and prosecution
of suspected trafficking offenders when trafficking crimes cross state lines; provide funding for states to
establish fast-track courts that deal with all forms of human trafficking; urge state governments to comply with
the October 2012 Supreme Court judgment on bonded labor; and provide anti-trafficking training or guidance for
diplomatic personnel to prevent their engagement or facilitation of trafficking crimes.
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