The old hotbeds of trafficking in India, like Mumbai and towns in Jharkhand, are now making way for a newer crop of dens, says Nepalese social activist and founder of Maiti Nepal, Anuradha Koirala, who was in the Capital to participate in the Second World Congress against the Sexual Exploitation of Women and Girls. Koirala is also one of the recipients of the Padma Shri this year.
"Trafficking has moved dangerously close to the Nepal border; towns like Parvez Ganj in Bihar and Siliguri in West Bengal. The new breeding grounds are towns like Pune, Nagpur, Allahabad, and Meerut. Surprisingly, Meghalaya, too, is turning out to be another such hotbed," she said.
Just as the trafficking hotspots inside the country have changed, the ones outside have changed too. The high rate of trafficking of young girls from Nepal have been setting these trends over the years, she says. "Nowadays, traffickers are taking away our girls to countries as far as Tanzania, Syria, Kazakhstan, Nairobi, Iran, and Iraq. The easiest ruse that is provided is that these girls are needed for domestic work. Why can't men also do this work?" she asks.
Most of the 'domestic work', says Anuradha, is basically old men demanding young, vulnerable girls for 'relaxation'. "There's a network that operates for the fulfilment of this 'relaxation', which is simply a covert term for sexual abuse of helpless girls held against their will," she said.
"The traffickers go to the house of a poor family with a young girl, and tell them, 'Your girl is coming of age, and you will need money to marry her off. Let me find a good job for her. I will take her and give you some money now, and she will get you the rest by next year.' Why is it that only girls need money to get married? Men also need money, no?" she says. Most traffickers exploit the vulnerability of these families, magnified by the lack of job opportunities and the porous borders with India.
Anuradha says that legislation and its proper implementation is the key to crack down on trafficking networks.
Anuradha's Maiti Nepal has been helping girls being forced into the trafficking trade for over 25 years. "The first thing that I wanted to do was to save these young girls. I wanted action, instead of just lip-service. I used to walk around Pashupatinath Temple, and would see several girls and women on the streets. All of them were either trafficked, or sexually abused, or were HIV positive. All of them were survivors of many forms of violence," remembers Anuradha.
She says that only equality among men and women can bring down such menaces. "Until and unless women and men are, in the most absolute terms equal, and not simply in the written word, we will not be able to combat any of these crimes against women," she says. "It it were not so, I would not be discussing these issues today, 25 years after I first started."
