Ending human trafficking in South Asia

ON December 9 a National Consultation Against Trafficking in Persons and the SAARC Convention Against Trafficking in Persons and the implementation was organised by the Women's Education and Research Centre in Colombo, Sri Lanka and Centre for Social Research (New Delhi), India. This consultation was sponsored by South Asian Regional Initiative / Equity (SARI/Q).

This consultation has been organised to create a National Action Plan and Develop a Road Map for implementation of the SAARC Convention Against Trafficking in Persons by the members of the South Asia Network Against Trafficking.

The Consultation is of immense importance and relevance in light of the fact that Sri Lanka has also ratified the SAARC convention. With this ratification, the convention has come into force and all SAARC member nations are bound to implement the convention.

The Consultation was attended by representatives from various NGOs, the Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It had regional attendance too.

Dr. Ranjanakumari, Executive Director of Centre for Social Research, New Delhi, Helga Klein, chief of party South Asian Regional Initiative / Equity (SARI/Q), and two other members from Centre for Social Research, New Delhi, attended this consultation.

Two papers were presented at this consultation, one by Ambika Satkunanathan from the International Centre for Ethnic Studies and another by Cyrene Siriwardhena from the Centre for Policy Alternatives which was presented by Shalindra Mylvaganam and Shahira Zahir.

Human Trafficking is not a new phenomenon to South Asia. It has been part of the cycle of movement in the region for centuries, with people being trafficked for reasons including prostitution, marriage and bonded labour.

With the advent of globalisation, human trafficking has become part of an increasingly well-coordinated network, often operated by organised transnational crime syndicates.

Although formal statistics are not readily available, media reports frequently highlight incidents of human trafficking occurring to and from Sri Lanka.

Both external and internal trafficking occurs in Sri Lanka and is often lined with prostitution and labour migration.

Similarly, from Bangladesh, an estimated 10-20,000 women and girls are trafficked annually to India, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

From Nepal every year 5,000-7,000 women and children are believed to be trafficked every year from Nepal to India. Nearly 99 per cent of total incest cases are held with children below 16 years according to the collected records.

Reports suggest that there have been one million Bangladeshis and more than 200,000 Burmese women trafficked to Karachi, Pakistan.

Sri Lanka is a source country for women who are trafficked to Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arabs Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar for the purposes of coerced labour and sexual exploitation. However, unfortunately Sri Lanka has no definite data regarding trafficking of women and children.

The SAARC Convention was drafted in 2002 and requires seven ratifications if it is to come into force. So far Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bhutan have ratified the convention while Nepal has submitted its ratification to the SAARC Secretariat.

In a region where there is increasing migration and trafficking. It is important that a regional convention follows progressive international norms and developments and functions as a guide to member states in formulating laws and creating frameworks to deal with trafficking.

Highlights

Ambika Satkunanathan stated that the SAARC Convention 2002, as its title clearly states, is a convention, which deals with trafficking in women and children only for the purpose of prostitution.

Although one might assume the scope of the convention is widebased upon article II of the Convention, which states the purpose is to enable member states to effectively deal with the various aspects of prevention, interdiction and suppression of trafficking in women and children, trafficking is defined narrowly in the Convention.

This Convention follows the early approach to trafficking only to prostitution and sexual exploitations.

Many SAARC member states prefer to follow this approach and define end products of trafficking narrowly. Since there is now a working definition of trafficking on the international level. It is important for the SAARC Convention to follow suit.

Shalindra Mylvaganam and Shahina Zahir though their power point presentation gave us further insights into how the Act in recent development in trafficking supplement/compliment current laws on trafficking and what will its impact on the proposed penal code amendments be.

The discussions

Helga Klein, Chief of Party, South Asian Regional Initiative / Equity (SARI/Q), said that the SAARC Convention and UN Protocol are frameworks that need to be interpreted in a wider scope and according to the domestic set-up by the member states. It is the legal responsibility of each State.

Regional cooperation is an important factor in facilitating the Convention and for this there should be a regional task force.

The Convention does seem to mainly focus on trafficking for prostitution, but action should and would be taken to broaden the focus of the purposes for trafficking consequently to criminalise the offences for trafficking for other purposes as well.

Dr. Ranjanakumari, Executive Director of Centre for Social Research, India, speaking on the SAARC Convention and Way Forward said that the whole aim is to create a network in South Asia to implement the SAARC Convention.

All the women's organisations are struggling in their countries to bring the focus on to trafficking of women and children in South Asia as a severe problem that needs immediate action.

The most important factor is that for all the SAARC Convention's weakness, it is in force, so we should try our best to implement it in our own countries.

Of course, necessary amendments need to be made according to the domestic laws of each country. She also said that pornography is something that is growing in high speed in the South Asian region. Trafficking for this purpose is severe in certain countries of the region.

Dhara Wijetilleke, Additional Secretary of Ministry of Justice, Legal and Human Rights Division, said that we should have a working arrangement with all the countries - regional cooperation to address the question of trafficking addressing all the end products that are important for this region.

Regional cooperation could be a working arrangement, with a regional plan of action which is practical and doable, uncompromising all these areas that are considered serious by this region could be the best way to address trafficking in the region.

Anything short of that would be a useless exercise; concentrating on the SAARC scope would also be useless, because it does not address all our concerns. We do not need a Convention to have working arrangements to have mutual cooperation, because investigation, rehabilitation and repatriation can all be done by agreements.

For more information, please contact:

Women's Education and Research Centre,

No. 58, Dharmarama Road, Wellawatte, Colombo-6.

Tel: 2595296/2590985

Fax: 2596313

E-mail: [email protected]

Centre for SocialResearch,

2, Nelson Mandela Road, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi - 110070

E-mail: [email protected]

Tel: 91+11+26899998

Website: www.csrindia.org