WCD to provide shelter homes for trafficked women in border areas

The Women and Child Development Ministry will provide funds to states & UTs in border areas to set up protection and rehabilitation centres for trafficked women. These centres will provide the rescued women basic necessities such as shelter, food, clothing, counselling and health facilities.

The ministry said that trafficked girl children who are rescued will be produced before a child welfare centre so that they can be declared fit for sponsorship. Under the Mission Vatsalya Scheme guidelines, biological or extended families of children in need and care or protection of the child will be supplemented with conditional financial support. Once the girl is declared fit for sponsorship, states will need to do the rest, the ministry said.

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Under the Nirbhaya Fund, the ministry said it helps build infrastructure to combat child trafficking in border areas and provide funding to all states and UTs to either set up or strengthen Anti Human Trafficking Units (AHTU) in every district. In border areas, funding is provided to border guarding forces. Till now, 788 such units have been built, and 30 of these are in border areas run by forces such as the Border Security Force of Sahastra Seema Bal.

As per data from the National Crime Records Bureau, trafficking cases in 2021 saw a jump of 27.7% since 2020 – it rose from 1,714 in 2020 to 2,189 cases in 2021. Only 16% of the cases registered in 2021 saw convictions.

The ministry said that India is a source as well as a destination country for the trafficking, and several women are trafficked from countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar to India under the promise for a better life, good jobs and better living conditions. “A majority of them are minor girls and women of younger age who are, after their arrival in India, sold and forced into commercial sex work,” ministry officials said.

The trafficked women often reach major cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, from where they are taken out of the country to Middle East and Southeast Asia, the ministry said.