Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil said on Thursday that the Indian government was concerned at the levels of human trafficking in the country.
“Human trafficking is one of the growing concerns of the government as enforcement agencies are sometimes not able to assess the magnitude of the problem,” Patil said.
He went on to underline the fact there were simply not enough police in the country to deal with the problem;
“”Sometimes police might not be able to reach the victim in time and it is therefore necessary that society plays a greater role in rescue and rehabilitation of these victims,” he said. He also admitted that national and state government needs to play a much more active part in the battle against exploitation and trafficking in particular.
Trafficking is, indeed, a major problem in India, with women and children being trafficked from rural areas, particularly in the north-east of the country to the urban centres of Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. There is also trafficking into forced marriage due to gender imbalances in some parts of the country caused by selective abortions by people who only want male children. On top of all this there is wide-spread trafficking of women and children into sexual exploitation in India from Nepal and Bangladesh.
Although figures are notoriously difficult to assess for human trafficking, it is certain that thousands of women and children are being trafficked every year into forced labour and sexual exploitation. A survey conducted by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has found that 61 percent of sexually exploited girls were below the age of 18 years.

Srey was trafficked at the age of 14 from her village to a large town in Cambodia. When she arrived she was told she would have to pay back the money the traffickers had spent on her and she could only do that by working as a prostitute. When she refused she was beaten and given electric shocks. For a year she was used by Cambodian, Thai and Western men. Eventually she became HIV positive and was afraid that she would never see her family again. She escaped, hiding in a dustbin until the search for her was called off. Her case is not an isolated incident. Some aid agencies estimate that up to 100,000 women and children from Cambodia and Thailand have been sold into sexual exploitation. Although these figures are debatable, there is clearly a major problem in the country. Of the 633 people rescued from forced prostitution in Cambodia’s brothels in the last year 40% were under the age of 15. One was aged 6.
There is some progress in the battle against human trafficking in Cambodia, with arrests of alleged sex offenders increasing from 50 in 1999 to 410 in 2004. There is, however still a deep rooted problem. John Vijghen who is an adviser to a coalition of groups fighting child trafficking said that;
“The number of Chinese, Japanese and Korean businessmen asking for virgins is increasing and nothing is being done about it”
It is time that the business travel community started to be a part of the solution to this problem and not part of the root cause for the exploitation of children. To read a full article on Srey’s story, please click here.

Thousands of Vietnamese women and children are being trafficked into forced prostitution and forced labour in China. Tran Mai Hoa (not her real name) was one such victim. She had dropped out of school and was looking for work in Halong City when a friend of her brother offered to take the girl on holiday with her. The offer seemed too good to miss, so Hoa allowed herself to be taken by car towards what she thought was their holiday destination. Before she knew what was happening they had crossed the border into China. She was taken to a house and forced into prostitution. Hua was forced have sex with up to ten men every day. When she tried to commit suicide the brothel owners stopped her. After a few months the car she was travelling in was stopped by Chinese police who were working with the Vietnamese authorities to crack down on human trafficking. The police managed to rescue her and after a few days she was back home. Unlike many returnees, Hua was welcomed by her family.
“We understand that a lot of the brothels are just across the border and a number of them are run by Chinese men married to Vietnamese women,” says Andrew Bruce, Director of the International Organization of Migration (IOM) country mission, saying the wives may be pivotal players in the trafficking business. The woman who lured Hua into being trafficked has since been arrested – although she was once also a victim of human trafficking. To read the full report of Hua’s story, please click here.

In Jakarta, Indonesia, authorities have indentified 120 recruitment agencies which may be linked to trafficking women into forced prostitution abroad. General crimes unit chief at the city police, Sr. Comr. Moh. Jaelani, said that they were investigating the agencies;
“We want to make sure that all of them obey the regulations so that our women migrant workers are not duped into prostitution abroad. We have many examples of how recruitment agencies lure young women and send them abroad as sex workers,” he said.
The owner of one such agency and its director have already been arrested, accused of trafficking 58 women into forced prostitution in Japan. The women were promised jobs as arts and cultural representatives by the labour agency PT Mediaseni Indonesia, but were allegedly forced into sex work on arrival. Two of the women managed to escape and it is their testimonies which lead to the arrest of the recruitment agency director and owner. 16 of the other women have been rescued so far.

An EU Commission report is set warn the governments of Bulgaria and Romania that if reforms do not speed up then their entry into the EU could be delayed from 2007 to 2008. One of the areas that is mentioned as being in need of attention is the fight against human trafficking. The report states that more has to be done to fight corruption in government and the judicial system. Corruption is one of the main factors which allows human traffickers to operate as it enables criminals to bribe police and also to obtain visas and passports for their victims.
Romania is a source and transit country for people being trafficked into forced labour, sexual exploitation and begging. The destinations for victims from Romania are mainly Spain, France and Italy. Accession to the EU would, at least initially, make such trafficking a lot easier as borders opened up.
Although Bulgarian citizens are trafficked into sexual exploitation, Bulgaria is mainly a transit country for people from Russia, Moldova, Ukraine and central Asian countries who are trafficked into sexual exploitation in the EU and also in South Eastern Europe. Again, without reform, entry into the EU would make trafficking easier.