FROM BONDAGE TO FREEDOM 88 Chapter 5 Trafficking of Women and Children in South Asia and the SAARC Convention on Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Women and Children for Prostitution, 2002. Trafficking in Women and Children is a contemporary form of slavery and a gross violation of women’s and children’s basic human rights, and a growing phenomenon all over the World. The trafficking of women and children has assumed alarming dimensions in South Asian countries like India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Pakistan. South Asia has both ‘sending’ and ‘receiving’ countries. India, for instance, is not only a receiving country, but transit country as well, from where women and children are siphoned off to sites within the region as well as to other parts of the World232. Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan may be characterized as sending countries, whereas Pakistan is both a country of destination as well as transit. One of the important steps taken to address the issue of trafficking at a regional level is the signing of the SAARC Convention on Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Women and Children for the purpose of prostitution. The Convention represents the resolve of the member countries to take coordinated action against trafficking and protect the victims by ensuring that their political and social human rights are not infringed upon or overlooked in any way, in whichever country they are. This Chapter would analyze the SAARC Convention to gauze how effective it is to counter trafficking. But before going into the provisions of the Convention and their analysis, the dimension of the problem in member countries affected by trafficking in women and children would be traced. Nepal Trafficking of Nepalese women and children for commercial sexual exploitation and for other purposes is a serious problem in Nepal. Trafficking is taking place within Nepal and from Nepal to other countries. 232 Jyoti Sanghera, Trafficking of Women and Children in South Asia: Taking Stock and Moving Ahead, project sponsored by UNICEF and Save the Children Alliance, Nov. 1999 p.4.