Child Trafficking Continues to Thrive, A Better Coordination Needed to Combat it

Abstract

Child trafficking is in fact a demand-driven problem. There are industries which run on the nimble fingers of children. The Bangle industry is one such industry among many others. Traffickers target the most vulnerable children. The offence of trafficking spans two or more two states. It makes prosecution of the traffickers difficult. The kind of energy, synergy, time and money required is hard to arrange as survivors of child trafficking belong to marginalised sections of society. The survivors do not go back to the place of rescue where they were trafficked, engaged and exploited. This results in traffickers committing the offence of child trafficking with impunity. India does not have a victim-centric comprehensive legislation on human trafficking to combat it. There is no dedicated working mechanism to combat human trafficking that works well. Anti-Human Trafficking Units across the country have remained on the papers. The Conviction rate in the crime of human trafficking is 1.5%, according to the National Crime Records Bureau 2021.