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The Fight Against Human Trafficking in India

Problems and Solutions with Human Trafficking in India
With its current population of 1.3 billion people, India is the second-largest country in the world. However, with its size comes a myriad of human rights issues. With so many people in one country, many of them can easily fall under the radar. Human trafficking in India is one of the most prominent human rights issues within the country.

In India, kidnappings for labor and sexual needs have been constant. In 2020, a U.S. Department of State report identified India as a Tier 2 country. In spite of many genuine efforts, the country remains hindered by its inadequate solutions to alleviate the problem and the department feels that India did not sufficiently ensure the mitigation of the issue. Enslavement has also been a common issue. In 2016, the Global Slavery Index found that 18 million people out of 46 million people are enslaved in India.

Trafficking of Women

Within the system of human trafficking in India, most of those victimized are either women or minors. In 2016, The National Crime Records Bureau estimated that 33,855 people in India have been victims of kidnapping for the purpose of marriage. Half of this percentage consisted of individuals under 18 years of age. Kidnappers most commonly force women into commercial sex and indentured servitude.

Bride trafficking has also been a consistent commodity due to skewed sex ratios in certain areas. There has been a lack of women for the larger male population to marry, so many buy their partners. A UNODC report in 2013 found that of the 92 villages of the Indian state of Haryana, nine out of 10 households bought wives from poor villages in other parts of the country. The report also mentioned that most of the women experienced abuse and rape as well as working like slaves.

Child Kidnappings

Alongside the trade of women, many child kidnappings occur. Kidnappers force many of the victims into servitude within industries of agriculture and manufacturing. In 2016, the Central Bureau of Investigation estimated that 135,000 children become victims of human trafficking in India annually. Many of the Indian train stations, such as Sealdah in the city of Kolkata, have had reports of youth kidnapping. Due to the frantic environment of the station, most of these disappearances go unnoticed. A lot of these children either live near the station due to poverty and abuse at home or travel out to work despite the danger and illegality of child labor. Children have also experienced kidnapping during natural disasters. During an earthquake in Nepal, traffickers targeted children whose parents had lost their lives. Wherever traffickers send these children, they work in brutal conditions and receive little pay or nothing at all.

Action in Legislation

Despite the magnitude of the issue and the bleakness it presents, there are glimmers of hope. The government and the public have pushed to mitigate these problems. Prosecution and the tracking of victims are becoming a focus of legislation creation. The Ministry of Women and Child Development has worked to develop a new law to combat the issue. The draft law will include measures to make placement agencies compulsory and rules to monitor where workers are from and where they are going. The 2020 Department of Justice report recommended that increased prosecutions and legislation are necessary to combat the issues.

There are also Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that can give outside assistance in helping trapped women escape. One such group is Chetanalaya, which is the social action group of the Archdiocese of Delhi. Started in 1970, the organization focuses on mobilizing volunteer groups and state and union governments to assist in its efforts. The group has managed to liberate more than 800 enslaved domestic workers in the past two decades.

Helping Faceless

With the rise of technology in India, many have looked to use new innovations to assist in their cause. An example of this is the app Helping Faceless. Created in 2013, it helps fight child kidnapping and trafficking through the use of search engines that use facial recognition to help find wandering youth. To assist in helping women, the website is available for anonymous documentation of sexual assaults and other horrific experiences. By 2015, 5,000 downloads had occurred and the app continues to grow with attempts to improve the technology. Moreover, some are proposing to bring it to other countries that have similar human rights issues.

Going Forward

While the current issues regarding human trafficking in India are immense, the information and technology available can help alleviate the problem. Looking into a problem is one of the best steps in creating a good future and, while it may take a while, there is reason to hope. With the large population in the country, there are many individuals who have survived these experiences and are ready to fight to ensure that others will not endure them.

– John Dunkerley
Photo: Flickr

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Human Trafficking in Lesotho

Human Trafficking in Lesotho
The most recent Trafficking in Persons Report, which the Department of State of the United States issued in 2020, asserts that the government of Lesotho does not meet the minimum requirements for the elimination of human trafficking and is not acting significantly enough to reach them. Aided by the severe lack of financial resources in the African nation, crime and violence can proliferate at a significant pace.

Overview of Lesotho’s Economy

The latest estimates by The World Bank place Lesotho among the poorest countries in the world with a nominal per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of $1,299. Meanwhile, expectations have determined that real GDP growth will average 0.6% between 2019 and 2021 down from the average 1.6% that the country experienced between 2015 and 2019.

Over the last few years, a myriad of factors has contributed to the slow growth of the economy. The overall sluggish global economic growth, especially in emerging markets, the grave instability within the political sphere, the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic woes of South Africa, a country which encircles Lesotho land-wise while being its major trade partner, are the main culprits for the current predicament.

Unemployment remains high at 22.83% in 2020 but the country has made improvements in recent times. Namely, the national poverty rate decreased from 56.6% in 2002 to 49.7% in 2017, led by a 13% reduction in urban poverty. Meanwhile, the extreme poverty rate decreased from 34.1% to 24.1% over the same period.

Overview and Root Causes of Human Trafficking in Lesotho

Despite the lack of consistently reliable data, recent studies show that Lesotho is principally a country of origin where traffickers target women and children to traffick them both internally (from rural areas to urban areas) and externally. Due to the particular geography of the region, most victims end up in the bordering nation of South Africa.

The economic conditions that the last section described greatly influence the occurrence of this type of crime. Impoverished communities, high unemployment, low levels of education and pronounced gender imbalances overlap with an ever thriving demand for cheap labor, thus generating an optimal environment for the spread of human trafficking in Lesotho.

Lesotho offers particular allure to traffickers due to the monetary rewards that human trafficking offers along with Lesotho’s particularly lenient penal prosecutions. In the case of sex trafficking,  Lesotho punishes with fines instead of imprisonment. Occasionally, victims themselves voluntarily cross the border on false hopes of employment and ameliorated living conditions only to fall prey to violence and abuse.

Government’s Response

The U.S. Department of State classifies countries within four tiers in its Trafficking in Persons Report. The Tier rating does not reflect simply the size of the problem of human trafficking in particular places but also the effectiveness of governments’ responses to it. The latest Report downgraded Lesotho to Tier 3, the worst possible classification. This means that the U.S. Department of State did not witness sufficient efforts from Lesotho’s government to mitigate the level of human trafficking during the previous year. The report urged Lesotho’s officials to further investigate, prosecute and convict traffickers through fair trials, adequately invest in shelters and protective services for victims and fund its Child and Gender Protection Unit (CGPU), which is responsible for handling trafficking cases within Lesotho law enforcement.

However, the report noted that some were taking steps to address human trafficking in Lesotho. The government partnered with an international organization and an NGO to conduct awareness-raising activities, it continued to participate in a regional data collecting tool and trained 27 diplomats on trafficking in persons. The state is also backing several projects with the aim of boosting economic growth, such as the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP II) and the improvement of service roads, therefore aiming to solve the root causes behind criminal activity.

– José Miguel Neves
Photo: Flickr

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Tackling Human Trafficking in Eritrea

Human Trafficking in Eritrea
Eritrea is an isolated, one-party state where children must frequently leave school for mandatory military training along with a large percentage of farmers and agricultural workers. This leaves food, water, education and shelter from violence almost inaccessible. For these reasons, many Eritrean citizens seek shelter in neighboring countries or refugee shelters where human trafficking is the most rampant. Human trafficking in Eritrea is very common due to over 30 years of violence between neighboring countries leaving it extremely militarized and vulnerable.

Human trafficking is a serious crime and a violation of human rights that occurs in almost every country in the world. The United Nations defines human trafficking as the recruitment, transportation and harboring of people for the purpose of forced labor, prostitution, slavery or any other means of exploitation. Trafficking runs rampant in underdeveloped nations, highly militarized and war-torn states and countries without sufficient protection systems in place.

Current State of Human Trafficking in Eritrea

Eritrea is classified as a source country. This means that the majority of human trafficking in Eritrea happens within the country’s borders, mainly for forced domestic labor with sex and labor trafficking happening abroad to a lesser extent.

Most trafficking occurs inside Eritrea’s borders because citizens face “strict exit control procedures and limited access to passports and visas,” trapping them in the country or forcing citizens to flee to refugee camps where they have a high chance of getting kidnapped and returned. Kidnappers commonly try to coerce victims with a promise of reuniting families, food or shelter.

Sinai Desert Trafficking

Between 2006 and 2013, non-domestic human trafficking in Eritrea increased exponentially. Smugglers of neighboring countries were kidnapping Eritreans from refugee camps in order to hold them in the Sinai Desert for ransom. Victims often experienced extreme violence like torture, organ harvesting and rape. Of the estimated 25,000 to 30,000 victims of Sinai trafficking, estimates have determined that about 90% are Eritrean.

Current Protection in Place

According to the U.S. Department of State, the Eritrean government has not reported significant efforts to identify and protect human trafficking victims in the 2020 Trafficking in Persons Report: Eritrea.

The government has not reported any systems in place to protect victims and the Eritrean court used to only require perpetrators of human trafficking to pay restitution and/or fines, but now it offers jail time along with a fine of $1,330-$3,330. The government has not identified or persecuted any government officials of human trafficking but did arrest 44 military officials for conspiracy to commit trafficking crimes in 2015.

Prevention and Progress

The U.S. Department of State ranks Eritrea as a Tier 3 country in human trafficking matters meaning that it does not meet the minimum anti-trafficking standards and is not making an effort to do so. The government did not report any protection systems in place for trafficking victims, it does not provide services directly to victims and it does not show significant effort to create legislation to punish traffickers.

Even though the Eritrean government continues to subject its citizens to forced national service, in 2019, it increased international cooperation on human trafficking and similar matters. Officials were active in an international anti-trafficking workshop that created a regional and national level action plan to combat trafficking.

In the past decade, Europe has offered to reinstate aid to Eritrea to help stimulate the economy and reduce the number of people attempting to leave the country. Europe is a destination point for many migrants who stop through Sudan and Libya on the way, but many do not make it through due to the difficult journey.

More recently, the Eritrean government has been educating its citizens on the dangers of irregular migration and trafficking through events, posters, campaigns and conventions to hopefully prevent men, women and children from entering high-risk trafficking zones. This is one of the best things the government can do for its citizens as it better informs them of their surroundings on a day to day basis.

The U.S. Department of State has also recommended the continuation of anti-trafficking training to all levels of government, as well as the enforcement of limits on the length of mandatory national service for citizens and the enactment and enforcement of anti-trafficking laws that criminalize the act and prosecutes the perpetrators of human trafficking in Eritrea.

One of the most important ways to slow or stop human trafficking would be to end mandatory national service or impose strict time limits on such service. Many Eritreans attempt to flee or experience trafficking by military officials because they are in service for an indefinite amount of time with no way out. Once Eritrea begins to persecute any and all human traffickers and can break free from an authoritarian one-party political system, it can begin to be a safe country for its citizens.

 – Julia Ditmar
Photo: Flickr

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The Defense Benefits of US Foreign Aid

U.S. Foreign Aid
People have historically looked at U.S. foreign policy as a stool supported by three legs: Defense, Diplomacy and Development. The final leg, development, refers to foreign aid. U.S. foreign aid is a vital tool in the U.S.’s national security toolbox and yet its 2019 budget did not even account for 8% of the budget for the first leg, national defense.

The need for national security is obvious, but the apparent belief that defense spending is the unilateral key to achieving this goal is dangerously reductionist. The U.S. federal budget represents a heavy reliance on military strength and a contrasting disregard for the other two facets of security. Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, called for a “whole of government approach,” when asked in his Senate confirmation hearing about how the U.S. should approach its competitive coexistence with China.

Where Does the Money Go?

In 2019, over $46 billion went toward foreign assistance, representing a roughly $6 billion decrease from appropriated funds in 2015. Where those tax dollars go matters when understanding the investment they represent in American safety and prosperity. The vast majority of those funds went to the U.S. Department of State and USAID. These are the two principal government agencies with the charge of managing U.S. foreign aid. Within those two federal agencies, funds go into nine categories with Peace and Security, Health and Humanitarian Assistance making up the bulk of aid.

Looking more closely, the Health sector received $9.5 billion in appropriations in 2019. The majority of that figure went towards HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in sub-Saharan Africa. This can have a substantial impact on reducing poverty as AIDS-related illnesses greatly reduce life expectancy in the countries that the epidemic most affected. Additionally, statistics have proven that the HIV/AIDS epidemic has slowed economic growth in Africa as it often prevents those affected from receiving an education or obtaining a job. Prevention and treatment of this epidemic is just one aspect of U.S. foreign aid.

Slow and Steady

Proving the results of U.S. foreign aid has long been a complicated task. The absence of conflict in a region is hard to credit with just one measure and not nearly as easy to point to as the existence of conflict elsewhere. Specific examples of changes in spending do however uncover gradual successes. Peace and Security funding goes towards military equipment, training and development. However, as the situation improves incrementally in certain countries, USAID and the Department of State are able to shift their efforts towards Democracy, Human Rights and Governance projects.

One example is Afghanistan, which received more U.S. aid in 2019 than any other nation. One should not ignore the fact that 17% of funds went to Peace and Security while 49% went to the aforementioned Democracy, Human Rights and Governance sector. This represents a marked shift as previous years focused the majority of aid on the military. Furthermore, it is representative of the slow yet undeniable progress that just about 1% of the federal budget has made.

When USAID first started working in Afghanistan in December 2002, the literacy rate was 50% for men and 20% for women. The budget that the Afghan government operated on came exclusively from donor support and accounted for just $600 million. The GDP per capita, a useful measure of average living standards in a country, was $250. By 2017, the GDP per capita had risen to $2,000. In 2018, the literacy rates had increased to 55.5% for men and 29.8% for women and the government’s budget had risen to $2.2 billion. These figures are not indications that the task is finished, but just some examples that U.S. foreign aid made the task possible.

Foreign Aid is Key to Grand Strategy

U.S. history has demonstrated the strategic gains of foreign aid countless times throughout U.S. history. Dating all the way back to the Marshall Plan in 1948, the U.S. provided more than $13 billion in aid to Europe so that the continent could rebuild after WWII. This allowed the U.S. to build stronger bilateral and multilateral ties with Europe, forming lasting alliances that reaped benefits in trade and a return to reduced conflict in the region.

During the 1960s, the U.S. improved upon this practice with the creation of USAID and the Peace Corps. From there, U.S. foreign aid expanded beyond to areas like education, agriculture and health. As a result, the U.S. could continue to project more than just military might. Key democratic values like education for girls and boys, free and fair elections, freedoms for the press and more could be developed around the globe. This all occurred in the context of a great power competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union with a clear understanding of the benefits of a three-legged approach in lieu of a military standing alone. As recently as 2017, a letter to Congress authored by roughly 120 retired U.S. admirals and generals called for a continuation of aid funding in the interest of, “preventing conflict and reducing the need to put our men and women in uniform in harm’s way.”

An End to “Forever Wars”

As the world becomes ever-more intertwined, the U.S. must evolve its own foreign policy to meet new challenges. Relying solely on the military places an impossible task on its shoulders as it attempts to help rebuild nations, improve foreign governments and end global poverty. This work requires professional diplomats trained for these tasks and foreign aid that allows governments and NGOs to do it themselves. In the long term, more foreign aid could mean the sending of fewer troops to war.

– Scott Mistler-Ferguson
Photo: Flickr