A report by the US State Department has noted that India does not fully comply with the minimum standards set by US law for foreign governments for elimination of trafficking in persons.
“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,” said the report released in Washington.
The State Department every year brings out the Trafficking in Persons Report, which, according to US government, represents “an updated, global look at the nature and scope of trafficking in persons and the broad range of government actions to confront and eliminate it”.
The US uses the report to engage governments of other countries in dialogues to advance anti-trafficking reforms and to combat trafficking and to target resources on prevention, protection and prosecution programs.
Like its previous versions, the 2015 report too placed India on the Tier II, indicating US assessment that the country still do not fully comply with the minimum standards set by the Trafficking Victim Protection Act of America, but is making significant efforts to do so.
The report notes that India “continued to fund shelter and rehabilitation services for women and children” throughout the country, 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,” it observes, “the government’s law enforcement progress was unknown” as it “did not provide adequate disaggregated anti-trafficking data and official complicity remained a serious concern.”
The report said India is not only “a source”, but also a “destination and transit country” for “men, women and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking”. “Forced labour 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,” it added.
According to the report, ninety per cent of India’s trafficking problem is internal, and those from the most disadvantaged social strata – Dalits, members of tribal communities, religious minorities, and women and girls from excluded groups – are most vulnerable.
It notes that 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.
(Published 28 July 2015, 19:53 IST)