Vijaylakshmi Brara
Everybody knows that human trafficking is induced through poverty of the extreme kind. In present times, this can be a result of growing globalisation and marginalisation of weak group of people or countries. Everywhere one is witnessing job recessions, out migration due to food insecurities, crop failure due to climate change, floods, famines, diseases are some of the various factors leading to deprivation world over. Another prominent features leading to human trafficking is when people want to escape the strife torn region. Conflict and especially armed conflict besides having political ramifications has deep rooted impact on the whole fabric of the society; socially culturally, breaking community bonding to the extent of even breaking families, creating women headed households, homelessness and consequently hopelessness. Fear of being annihilated leads to vulnerabilities where education takes a toll. Regular indignities makesone feel less mortal. Hence in such a scenario when people perceive a little flickering light at the end of the tunnel, dubious or real they tend to move in that direction. And this is where the traffickers spread their net.
Movement of people for exploitative purposes has been going on for centuries It’s the barbaric remanent of our civilised world for which no heads have gone down in shame. This slave tradein the past apart from getting cheap or free labour, it was also a sign of subjugation of a group of people by a dominant group, subjugation of a community by another, subjugation of a nation by another, subjugation of another race by another. African nations’ history is abound with Portuguese invasion and then the Dutch and later the British and the Americans. However, with the advent of modern ideas, march of times and development of law, both at the national and international arena, and the treatise between the countries, slave trade as a system of domination of one nation over the others has been obliterated and later human trafficking too has been made illegal. It now essentially remains as a product of poverty, operating underground, dodging the legal machineries. Those who are under bondage after being victims of human trafficking are believed more than 30 million who are virtually leading the life of slaves in the world today.
I happened to be in communication with a Filipino woman. She told me that people ask her as to what is wrong with your society, your country your families. Why does it allow its girls to be trafficked? She gave them an answer with a counter question.” Why don’t you go and ask your men, your families and your country.
The answer perhaps lies in the fact that trafficking normally happens outside the community- community bond – that enables the traffickers to control better the victims. The victims are transported to an alien environment and culture, so that they remain vulnerable which makes it easier for the traffickers to keep them under their control. As far as girl victims are concerned, it is because of the age old phenomenon to satisfy men’s perverted sexual lust.
Trafficking and conflict zones:
Women and children bear the extra brunt in conflict situation wherein their attempt to flee the conflict fall easy prey to the traffickers. According to GIWPS (George town Institute for Women Peace and Security) 2022 report, refugees and IDPs are particularly vulnerable. They have to abandon their education, the economic securities and the worse is that contrary to trafficking in situations other than conflict where the person is duped, lured, cheated, in conflict they are often taken forcefully. According to Cindy Dyer, Vice President, Human Right Vital Voices, the real experts are the survivors of trafficking. And therefore for building any response the “survivor advocates” need to have a seat on the table.
During World War II, an estimated two hundred thousand “comfort women” were forced into prostitution in brothels serving the Japanese military. Many were Korean women who had been offered false promises of education, foreign travel, and high-paying jobs. According to Jamille Bigio and Rachel Vogelstein in their article on Understanding Human Trafficking in Conflict Zone, UN peacekeepers and personnel frequently sexually exploit and abuse the very citizens they are tasked with protecting. Two thousand allegations were lodged against UN missions worldwide from 2005 to 2016; in 2018, UN peacekeepers faced allegations of sexual exploitation or abuse in countries including the Central African Republic, Haiti, and South Sudan.
Similarly in the north east India, anybody growing in the early 80s can tell you the difference between the bomb , crackers and bullets. There have been conflicts between ethnic groups, between state and non-state groups so much so that curfews, bandhs, protests and displacement had become a routine affair. There has been a routinisation of conflict where such structural maladjustments penetrates into the social structures. It has a rippling effect in various social institutions and manages to tear the fabric of the society. In such a situation people yearn and seek to move out. Some who can do and some who can’t take the help of people who then traffic them into the world of further deprivation and slavery. Vulnerability and duping are the key words in understanding this evil.
Need for Paradigm Shift:
Paradigm is from a Greek word Paradigm a which means pattern- a mental image of the way things are. It is never an objective process because we see the world as we are. It’s a perception from a certain value system which you don’t question. Now when do we have a paradigm shift? Let me give an example; while sitting in a bus stand a man saw that there are two children with a father. Those children were creating nuisance. The man perceived the father to be an irresponsible parent and told him to control his children. To which the man suddenly was jolted from his thoughts and said oh! Sorry, actually their mom just died! This is where the paradigm shifted.
So what has been the paradigm of human trafficking?
Our newspapers and google searches are filled with the number of children and girls been lured into seemingly better destinations and then put into pitiful conditions. There are two things here; first is the emphasis on statistics and second is the emphasis on women and children. There have been several instances the world over and also in Northeast India when youngmen are also lured into lucrative jobs, especially in Dubai in other places, where they are then kept in inhuman conditions and are not paid salaries. They somehow go out of the ambit of our paradigms of human trafficking. Second is the issue of too much emphasis on statistics. For three days I went through the internet and other references, but could not find any account or experiences of the victims of trafficking in our region. What we have is the portrayals of problematic images, what we need is the spread of lived – in experiences. The narratives, the stories need to be heard. What is it that makes people vulnerable? There can also be accounts of such migrants helping each other out. There is a need to bring in the victims on the dias and listen to them and also learn from their experiences and bring them into the fold of policy initiatives as stated by Cindy Dyers.
“When the voices of the enslaved are heard, when victims and survivors are made visible, amazing things can happen. We bring the perspective and experience only victims, only survivors can bring. Together we can bring real and sustainable long-term change”. This was stated by Rani Hong, herself the trafficked victim at the age of seven, who fortunately was adopted by one family in Washington. She could finish her high school and married her high school sweetheart who was himself a victim of trafficked child soldier from Vietnam. Together they founded the Tronie Foundation in USA.
“Millions of children right now are walking around in the streets,” she said. “Like the little girl that I was, many of them are imprisoned, silenced and not able to tell their stories. But I demand that we are heard.” She stressed the importance of empowering victims to effect positive social change. “We inspire new ideas, unlock new solutions. We turn a geopolitical and economic issue into a human one,” she said, calling on the international community to work with victims to empower women and girls.
Second paradigm shift needs to in the area of blanket raid and rescue strategy. It dangerously skirts around the moral judgemental issues. The state raids and brings back the victims. But, to what? To be ready to be taken away again. What do we do to hold them back? Their abject poverty or other desperate situations will again lead them to their traffickers who are not some big organised mafia, but their known family members, neighbours, church members etc. Therefore, trafficking needs to come out of the pouch of criminalization framework.
We need to understand that trafficking is through force, fraud or coercion. In the marginalised regions it is more through fraud and coercion. In North east it is increasing alarmingly. The society has been riddled with all kinds of conflict and violence and the poor is becoming poorer. In such a situation anybody offering better or free education, better jobs, or some kind of income is held on like a latch. What we need here is not the rescue framework but a total paradigm shift, a structural change in the society itself. We need to design a paradigm of social change. Today it can be said that northeast India has arrived at a stage which can be called a post-conflict scenario. We do see a rising class of entrepreneurs and the present generation willing to look forward and build up their enterprise and consequently their society. But when the tentacles may rise again this nobody knows.
We also have applicable models to keep a tab on the health of our society. We have the long tested but not very fruitful GDPs, then came a more fruitful model of Human Development index, which has more inclusive and wide range of quantifying indicators. The latest in line is the Gross Happiness index, which has been pioneered by the King and the prime minister of Bhutan. It has both quantifiable as well as qualitative indicators to see the wellbeing of its society. The four pillars of GNH are the promotion of sustainable development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and establishment of good governance. At this level of generality, the concept of GNH is trans-cultural. It has further defined these four pillars with greater specificity into eight general contributors to happiness-physical, mental and spiritual health; time-balance; social and community vitality; cultural vitality; education; living standards; good governance; and ecological vitality.
Conflict and consequent marginalisation from the developmental processes surely doesn’t raise the Happiness Index, in fact it is at its lowest ebb. So are they happy? No, they are not. Consequently, there are also increased number of IDPs (internally displaced people). So, are the community bonds as strong as they were before? No they are not. Today we have a mass majority of population who have been displaced from their land, hence their culture and societal bonds. Away from their natural habitats, their living standards have gone to shambles. It is not an easy decision, especially by the young, vulnerable group to take the risk of going into the unknown lands. They still do, just so that they are safe and their family is uplifted.
It is high time that we build think tanks to discuss the issues of such structural maladjustments. Issues of livelihood has to come first and foremost. We need to think and give a paradigm of accountability and of working governance, which is looking towards an all inclusive development, not through raids and rescues – the so called rescues. There should be an honest attempt to break this vicious cycle.
(The author is a Professor of Sociology, Royal Global University, Guwahati)
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