FROM BONDAGE TO FREEDOM
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Estimates of the number of Nepalese girls and young women lured
or abducted to India for sexual exploitation each year ranges from 5,000
to 10,000. The total number of Nepalese working as prostitutes in India
range from 40,000 to 200,000. India also receives women and children
from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan and sends them to
Europe and Middle East. Therefore, trafficking has assumed a gigantic
proportion in India and calls for a comprehensive and concerted efforts
on behalf of all the South Asian countries to counter the menace.
On the perusal of the country positions of India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan,
Bangladesh and Nepal, the compelling factors in South Asia that fuel
trafficking in persons are:
1.
Economic Vulnerability
The pull factors are exercised by the demand for cheap, vulnerable
labour to reduce the costs of production, to service the sex industry and
for the service sector because local labour is not available or willing e.g.
Bangladesh women work in carpet weaving, fish drying in Karachi, in
construction or home based production in India, as prostitutes or by way
of being forced into marriage. The push factor results from survival
strategies of poverty and the urge for mobility, leading to movement from
villages to towns and across borders. Women’s share in poverty is even
more pronounced. Their control over land and other means of production
is considerably lower than that of men. Structural adjustments followed
by economic liberalization have eroded the village production base.
Families are increasingly dependent upon women’s labour but few
opportunities are opening up. Although credit schemes have been opened
for women, they do not invest in production but only in petty trade and
commerce. Many of them have become wageworkers, unpaid family
workers or domestic workers.
2.
Social and Political Vulnerability
•
Political changes in South Asia have created new frontiers
against women’s mobility. Crossing a river suddenly leads
to another country even though 50 years ago it was one.
•
Political systems also lead to migration such as the Rohingyas
in Bangladesh who become targets of trafficking to Pakistan.
•
Discriminatory laws and practices such as desertion,