The growing problem of trafficked girls being forced into marriages in the low sex ratio states of Punjab and Haryana finds a prominent mention in this year’s US Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, which measures anti-trafficking progress made by governments across the world.
The report, released yesterday by the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, asks India to bring defaulting states like Punjab and Haryana in line on the existing human trafficking prevention laws and records the fact that Naxals are forcibly recruiting children in their ranks.
Acknowledging Home Ministry’s law enforcement efforts through anti-human trafficking units, the report says India did not fully comply with the minimum standards for elimination of trafficking. It records a new challenge - growing official complicity in trafficking.
“Increase prosecutions and convictions on all forms of trafficking, including bonded labour; prosecute officials allegedly complicit in trafficking,” says the report retaining India in Tier 2 rating list on trafficking.
The report says, “There were increasing reports of females from north-eastern states and Odisha subjected to servile marriages in low female-to-male child sex ratio states of Haryana and Punjab and also reports of girls subjected to transactional sexual exploitation in the Middle East under the guise of temporary marriages.”
TIP Report 2012 mentions continued forced labour of children in hybrid cottonseed plots in Gujarat and indicates possible forced labour in the Sumangali scheme in Tamil Nadu in which employers pay young women a lumpsum to be used for dowry at the end of a three-year term. It records how job placement agencies “were luring adults and children for forced labour or sex trafficking under false promises of employment and how Indian boys from Bihar were being subjected to forced labour in embroidery factories in Nepal.”
“Corrupt law enforcement officers reportedly continue to facilitate movement of sex trafficking victims, protect suspected traffickers and brothel keepers from law enforcement, and received bribes from sex trafficking establishments and sexual services from victims,” records the report. It says government reported no prosecutions or convictions of government officials for trafficking-related offences during the reporting period (2011-12).
Damning US Report
* Naxals are forcibly recruiting children in their ranks
* There is growing official complicity in trafficking
* There are increasing reports of females from north-eastern states and Odisha subjected to servile marriages in low female-to-male child sex ratio states of Haryana and Punjab
* Girls are reportedly subjected to sexual exploitation in the Middle East under the guise of temporary marriages
* Job placement agencies are luring adults and children for forced labour or sex trafficking
TIP RATINGS
* TIP Report 2012 retains India in Tier 2
* Tier 2 countries: Those that don't fully comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act's (TVPA) minimum standards but are making efforts to do so. In 2011, India had been removed from Tier 2 watch list which features countries where victims of severe trafficking were increasing
* Tier 1 countries are those whose governments fully comply with the TVPA
* Tier 3 countries are those that are not doing anything major to combat trafficking
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