The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Law sought to tackle child trafficking

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 13, 2006
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Law sought to tackle child trafficking

Special Correspondent

Action plan drafted by State Government two years ago is pending Cabinet approval

VULNERABLE LOT: Children at a protest demonstration organised in Bangalore on Tuesday to mark Global Day Against Child Trafficking. — Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

Bangalore: An action plan to combat trafficking in women and children was drafted in the State two years ago. But the document is gathering dust, pending Cabinet approval. India is yet to pass a special law on child trafficking that broadens the definition of the crime to include offences that are not sexual in nature.

Campaign Against Child Trafficking (CACT), an umbrella organisation of various groups working on the issue of child rights, highlighted the Government's apathy to this serious issue by holding a demonstration to mark Global Day Against Child Trafficking here on Tuesday.

Transit point

Vasudeva Sharma of Child Rights Trust said there was an urgent need to recognise that trafficking occurred not just for the sex trade but also for child labour, begging, drug peddling, trade in human organs and so on. Bangalore, he said, was an important transit point for traffickers because of its access to vulnerable rural pockets and proximity to tourism centres.

Even the existing laws, Mr. Sharma pointed out, were not being implemented properly because of administrative apathy and lack of resources. Though some effort was being made to rescue child labourers in urban centres, there was no mechanism in place to rehabilitate them, he said. "This makes once-rescued children vulnerable to trafficking again," be observed. Those who wanted to expose cases of trafficking were themselves vulnerable because there were powerful networks at work in the area, and those who fight them were not ensured protection by the law, he said. The police tended to take cases of missing children lightly, and grassroots bodies such as gram panchayats did not even have data on the number of children in their area, Mr. Sharma said.

The CACT has demanded new laws to tackle trafficking effectively and strengthening of existing laws. According to the CACT, over 44,000 children are reported missing in India annually, and only 22 per cent of them are traced. Over 100 million children in India work as child labourers, which makes up almost a third of the total population of children in the country.

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