THE LOST CHILDREN OF INDIA: ADDRESSING CHILD

TRAFFICKING
INTRODUCTION
As the third largest profitable industry in the world, human trafficking exposes children
to violence, abuse, neglect, and exploitation. According to the United Nations Children
Fund (UNICEF), a child victim of trafficking is “any person under eighteen who is
recruited, transported, transferred, harboured, or received for the purpose of
exploitation, either within or outside a country. India specifically is a source, destination,
and transit country for trafficking for many purposes, especially sexual exploitation, with
40% of prostitutes in India being under the age of eighteen. The majority of the trafficked
children come from Nepal and Bangladesh, with an estimated 12,000-50,000 coming
specifically for the sex trade. Furthermore, there is a rising demand for live-in maids in
Indian urban areas, resulting in the trafficking of girls from rural villages to live in poor
conditions within employers’ homes. Child trafficking is not entirely a socio-legal issue,
but is rather more of a symptom of a multitude of issues with India’s society and lifestyle.
As human transportation often takes place with the victims’ and their families’ knowledge
because of the economic benefits, detecting a victim and the agents involved can be
challenging for the international community.

Millions are involved and affected by the great extent of human trafficking in India, but
importantly, the national government is not being held accountable for its obligations
under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and other frameworks. In
fact, most regions in India continue to fail in providing comprehensive child protection
systems like birth registration, access to education, combating early marriage, and more.
The country has suffered greatly from its lack of compliance. There is little effort on the
part of official agencies to connect child trafficking with the cases of abduction, forced
labour, and child marriage. As legal bodies continue to disregard all aspects of child
trafficking, the situation continues to expand throughout India, tearing apart entire
families and communities. Inequalities amongst communities and entrenched poverty
have also left many regions vulnerable to being targeted by traffickers. These additional
nuances pose further complications for the international community in finding a solution,
as each state possesses their own view on trafficking and the legality of certain practices
often associated with trafficking.

For the past two decades, child trafficking in India has been on the rise, and almost one
in every three missing children remains untraced. This alarming statistic should signal to
the international community a simple message: accountability and action must be taken.
The Fourth Committee is equipped to address this issue and provide substantial solutions
that will prevent child trafficking in India. When examining this issue, delegates should
remain cognizant of the four key aspects of the issue that allow trafficking in India to
continue: existing legal measures that are not enforced, social gender imbalance, forced
labour, and lack of investigation of missing child populations. SPECPOL should analyse
existing political efforts and develop new ones to effectively curb the horrifying rate of
India’s trafficked children.

HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF THE ISSUE

Forms of Child Trafficking

The intended or actual after-sale uses of these children include forced labour, sexual
exploitation, the armed forces, the drug trade, and begging. Forced labour, which affects
an estimated 20 to 65 million citizens, represents India's largest trafficking problem.
These children are trapped in debt bondage, which is often inherited from previous
generations, and forced to work in industries such as brick kilns, rice mills, agriculture,
and embroidery factories. Also, for the most part, India's trafficking problem is an internal
one, with 90% of trafficking occurring between the states of the country. It is the most
disadvantaged portions of the society, “lowest caste Dalits, members of tribal
communities, religious minorities, and women from excluded groups” that are most
vulnerable to this exploitation. For example, boys from Bihar, a state in the north of India,
are particularly vulnerable to forced labour in embroidery factories in Nepal. Burmese
Rohingya and Sri Lankan Tamil child refugees also continue to be vulnerable to forced
labour in India.

The placement agencies also provide child labour, usually young girls, for domestic
service, which meets the demand for cheap and passive workers. Children not only face
the risk of forced labour, but also of being used for military purposes. Boys from the
region of Kashmir are have been forced in the past by insurgent separatists and terrorist
groups to fight against the Indian government. Besides forced labour of these children,
commercial sexual exploitation is also a major concern, almost “80 percent of all
worldwide trafficking is for sexual exploitation, with an estimated 1.2million children
being bought and sold into sexual slavery every year in India alone”. Girls and women are
commonly sold into brothels in India and have also been kidnapped in the past to become
wives for men who have few women in their villages.

Religious pilgrimage centers and tourist destinations in particular are hotspots for sex
trafficking of these children. Young female trafficking victims, the majority nine to
fourteen, are frequently exploited in the regions of Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi, Gujarat, and
along the India-Nepal border. These traffickers sometimes pose as matchmakers,
arranging sham marriages within India or to Gulf States, and then subject women and
girls to sex trafficking. Recently, experts also reported an increasing demand for young
women from smaller towns in North and Western India for sex and labour trafficking;
until recently, victims have typically originated from Eastern India and Bangladesh.
Contributing Factors to Child Trafficking in India

When looking to address the issue of child trafficking it is important to not only
understand the types of trafficking, but also the underlying causes that place these
children in vulnerable situations. The only way to create a truly comprehensive solution
to this topic is by also addressing the foundational cultural, political, and economic causes
of trafficking within society. Poverty and lack of educational and economic opportunities
represent the primary cause of trafficking in India and abroad. In addition, some
secondary causes for trafficking, and specifically child trafficking, include “low
employment prospects, a patriarchal culture, low regard for women’s rights, low levels
of education, discrimination and marginalization of women, and cultural factors such as
dowry issues.” Interviews with affected individuals and data from NGOs based on the
ground have also shown that natural disasters and conflict only serve to further
exacerbate the situation. In support of these findings, most child victims of trafficking in
India come from poverty-stricken families who do not have proper and sufficient access
to police services or whose reports are not taken as legitimate. For instance, the highest
number of missing children is from the Maharashtra and West Bengal states, mostly due
to their poverty-stricken and weak economies.

Child traffickers often take advantage of the parents' extreme poverty in order to get what
they want. Desperate parents, in India and elsewhere, may sell children to traffickers in
order to pay off debts or gain income, or they may be misled concerning the prospects of
training, a good marriage, and a better life for their children. Another factor that has led
to a increase demand in sex trafficking is globalization and the rise of internet technology.
Studies have identified the internet as the single biggest facilitator of the commercial sex
trade; current difficulties lie in ascertaining whether the women and young girls
advertised on sites are sex trafficking victims. Other impacts that can make children
vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation are the economic influences of globalization,
which pushes people to make conscious decisions to migrate with or without their family
and this opens them up to the vulnerability of trafficking.

Women and girls are a particularly vulnerable group to trafficking because of social
norms that marginalize their value and status in society. Females face considerable
gender discrimination both at home and in school. These gender inequalities then hinder
women from participating in the formal sector, pushing them into informal sectors.
Certain religious beliefs also cause individuals to believe that the birth of girls are a result
of bad karma, further cementing the belief that girls are not as valuable as boys. Various
social norms contribute to women's inferior position and lack of agency and knowledge,
thus making them vulnerable to exploitation such as sex trafficking. India’s brand of
religiosity and ingrained ideas about women make it extremely difficult to change the
populations’ attitudes and views of women, let alone address violence against women.
Traditional Hindu beliefs hold that girls should be raised as submissive daughters and
obedient wives. The trafficking of women of all ages is just one way the serious issue of
gendercide is demonstrated in India.
International Definition and Illegality of Human Trafficking

It is an inconvenient truth that “trafficking” is disregarded as a definition and often

misrepresented by legal authorities, only leading to further discrepancies. This fact
contributes to the lack of enforcement regarding trafficking and it’s severe violation of
human rights. The official definition of trafficking can be found in various sections of the
Immoral Traffic Prevention Act of 1956 (ITPA), and a definition focusing on child
trafficking can be found in the Goa Children’s Act of 2003, both of which are sponsored
by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Section 2 defines child
trafficking specifically as “the procurement, recruitment, transportation, transfer,
harboring or receipt of persons, legally or illegally, within or across borders, by means of
threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of
the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of giving or receiving payments or
benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for
monetary gain or otherwise.” Because of the detail and complexity of the definition, there
exist a number of different legal crimes that fall under the definition of trafficking.

Overall, the offence of trafficking is made up of a combination of factors, the first being
the displacement of a person from one community to another. This displacement could
be from one house to another, one village to another, one state to another, or even from
one country to another. Secondly, trafficking is most frequently paired with sexual
exploitation, as young girls are typically the most vulnerable targets. This practice may
be through processes such as forced labour in a brothel, or even massage parlours and
bars, where it takes place under the façade of a legitimate commercial activity.

Thirdly, those that exploit the trafficked person must generate revenue out of the
exploitation. The combination of the above three offenses constitutes direct disobedience
of international law according to the agreed upon definitions of human and child
trafficking. Once trafficked, a victim has been subjected to over 20 violations of the Indian
Penal Code, seven violations of the ITPA and over eleven violations of the Human Rights
Act. As delegates of SPECPOL, it is important to acknowledge the existence of this
legislation and how India’s government and law enforcement personnel has clearly
disregarded it. Though largely ambiguous, the definition clearly illustrates the illegality
of India’s excessive trafficking, further demonstrating India’s lack of adherence to
national and international law.

United Nations Efforts

In addition to India’s anti-trafficking legislation and programs, the UN has also made a
great amount of global effort to combat the issue of child trafficking. The majority of the
UN’s effort regarding human and child trafficking comes from the United Nations Office
on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), a committee that offers practical assistance to states in
drafting laws and developing anti-trafficking strategies. By laying out and analyzing the
elements of human trafficking and the motivation behind the traffickers, UNODC
recognizes the need for national legislations to establish definitions of trafficking as well
as enforce the criminalization of trafficking.

The adoption in 2000 by the UN General Assembly of the “Protocol to Prevent, Suppress
and
Punish Trafficking In Persons, Especially Women and Children” marked a significant
milestone in international efforts, as it brought the attention of the entire international
community to the growing trafficking issue. According to the protocol, human trafficking
means the “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by
means of threat or use of abuse force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of
deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or
receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over
another person, for the use of exploitation.”
As the guardian of the Protocol, the UNODC addresses human trafficking issues through
its Global Programme Against Trafficking in Persons (GPAT). A vast majority of States
have now signed and ratified the Protocol, but translating it into reality remains
problematic for the international community, and in India especially. While GPAT focuses
on criminal justice, very few criminals are actually convicted in India, and most victims
are probably never identified or assisted. Furthermore, GPAT has proven to be
understaffed, disorganized and insufficient in its data collection. GPAT has not
established, nor has it attempted to, that the problem of human trafficking requires a
great amount of attention.

In addition to addressing general human trafficking, the UN has also developed

conventions to acknowledge specifically trafficked children’s rights. When children move
or are moved, they have a right to special protection because they are under the age of
18. In addition, they are under the protection that all people should expect when they are
moving for legitimate reasons, such as seeking employment or a better living
environment.

Other rights that should be expected after moving include the freedom to work without
being exploited, freedom to good health, freedom from ill treatment, and the freedom to
decent work according to international labour standards. Because trafficking is a direct
violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), the majority of children’s
rights are being ignored, including their rights to be protected from exploitation, to
remain with their family, to go to school, and to be protected from sexual violence.

When trafficked, these children are exposed to work and living conditions that are
dangerous to their health, safety, and oftentimes morals. Moreover, their rights
guaranteed under the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child state that children should enjoy the rights accorded
to all human beings under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 (UNDHR).
The UNDHR is one of the oldest Declarations that all member states have signed; yet child
trafficking directly threatens and violates these inherent human rights.
Other UN efforts to eradicate trafficking are made by the International Labour
Organization (ILO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF); in particular, UNICEF supports
the Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN.GIFT). Under this initiative, an expert
group on child trafficking was created. UN.GIFT, “a global alliance for policy, knowledge,
international cooperation, and awareness on human trafficking,” was launched on March
25, 2007, marking 200 years since the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The
organization aims to eradicate human trafficking by reducing the vulnerability of
potential victims and the demand for exploitation, ensuring adequate protection of
current victims, and supporting the prosecuting of criminals involved while respecting
the fundamental human rights of all persons.

UN.GIFT has been attempted to begin these efforts in very few regions of India, including
West Bengal. It is crucial to understand as a committee that these UN rights do indeed
exist; they just are not successfully implemented in India. For this reason, SPECPOL needs
to take extreme measures in addressing the fact that these laws are passed, but not
enforced.

Human Trafficking Legislation within India

While India has made a significant amount of political effort to eliminate human
trafficking, including India’s viewpoint of trafficking as illegal, very little of the passed
legislation has proven to be successful. The Indian Constitution explicitly prohibits the
trafficking of human beings and forced labour, and makes both offences punishable by
law. Article 23(1) of the Constitution reads:
“(t)raffic in human begins…and forced labour are prohibited and any contravention of
this provision shall be an offence punishable in accordance with law.”

Meanwhile, the Article 39(f) imposes a duty on the country to direct its policy towards
ensuring “that children are given opportunities and facilities to develop in a healthy
manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity and that childhood and youth are
protected against exploitation and against moral and material abandonment.”
Both of these laws place attention on the connection between human trafficking and
forced labour, as well as India’s national government’s responsibility to address this
pressing issue. In addition to India’s own national legislation, the country has ratified a
number of international treaties, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
(1992), the Optional
Protocol to CRC on Sale of Children, Child Prostitution, Child Pornography (2004),
Optional
Protocol to CRC on Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (2004), the Protocol to
Prevent,
Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons especially Women and Children (2011), and
the
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1979).
The main legal instrument within India that addresses the trafficking of human beings w
is the
Immoral Traffic Prevention Act of 1956 (ITPA). This law is also supplemented by
provisions in other domestic laws, including the Indian Penal Code of 1860 (IPC).
Currently, anti-trafficking laws of the ITPA focus on sexual exploitation and have
blatantly ignored more recent reasons for child trafficking that include domestic,
commercial, and industrial labour, tourism, and camel jockeying.

However, the Act does promise victims of trafficking rescue and rehabilitation, as well as
punishment for trafficking offences. The IPC, on the other hand, places more of an
emphasis on child trafficking specifically. It imposes criminal penalties for kidnapping,
abducting, buying or selling a minor for prostitution, unlawful compulsory labour,
importing girls, and buying or selling a person for slavery. It is vital that India is able to
pass, and more importantly, enforce legislation that addresses the causes and
repercussions of all types of trafficking within in India. However, because there is no clear
definition of missing children amongst the various legal systems that exist in India, there
is a great amount of confusion as to how the cases should be treated. Coming up with a
standard definition should therefore be a top priority, and delegates should determine if
their own country’s legal definitions would be an appropriate model when formulating
this classification for missing children.

Enforcement of Existing International and Domestic Legal Instruments

Despite the political achievements made by India’s legislation, the prosecution and
conviction of traffickers has proven very difficult. In addition, when it comes to the
situation of missing children, there exists no legal Indian definition of a missing child, and
each state follows its own rules attempting to track and investigate the missing
populations. According to a study by Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), an India-based
movement campaigning for the rights of children and an end to human trafficking, nearly
eleven children go missing in India every hour, and at least four of them are never found.
The majority of these missing children are not acknowledged, let alone registered and
their cases investigated by police and enforcement agencies. The fact that the police of
India, barring a few states, often do not register first information reports (FIR), even
though they are considered the first step to an investigation, is one of many glaring
shortcomings within the FIRs are written documents prepared by the police when they
receive information about a cognizable offence, meaning that the police may arrest a
person without warrant. This FIR authorizes the police to start an investigation
immediately without permission or orders from the court to do so.

Such authorization allows the police to forgo the time, paperwork and legal nuances to
begin investigating; instead, they can begin investigating without approval from the
judicial officials. In addition to this barrier to quick and effective response times by police
to missing persons reports; often times formal cases are not ever filed in India. Police
frequently only make an entry into the list of missing persons at the police station where
the child is reported missing, this is a major hindrance to the investigation process and
prevents police from providing the in-depth and expansive investigations that the cases
deserve.

Law enforcement officers and immigration officials in India receive very little training
and are unaware of the fundamental elements in recognizing, preventing, and combating
trafficking cases at such a large scale. However, the greatest challenge comes from the
lack of awareness on the part of victims, their families, and their communities regarding
the existing legal protection that they receive as victims. Such knowledge is a two-way
street: if victims are unaware of their legal rights of employment, protection, rescue, and
rehabilitation, they cannot demand that the government enforce pre-existing laws. In
achieving this awareness, it is important that this committee not only holds the Indian
government accountable, but also supports grassroots and localized efforts to teach
citizens about their rights again trafficking.

This lack of law enforcement and police action contributes to the victimization of children
throughout India, making it easy for traffickers to get away with a crime that is clearly
laid out as illegal in India’s legislation. Without the proper use of legal processes and filing
of cases, these children will continue to go missing, without any efforts from India’s
government to find them.
Rather than focusing on the passing of more laws, which has proven to be inefficient in
the past, it is crucial that SPECPOL finds nuanced ways to address the ignoring of human
rights by India’s political systems and their overall general lack of effort to return these
trafficked children home.

India’s Anti-Trafficking Policies and Programs

Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, various actions were taken to tackle child
trafficking in India due to a generally heightened awareness of the issue globally. In 1998,
the Indian Prime
Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, approved a National Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking
and
Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Women and Children (NPA), which focused on the
implementation of the ITPA and the rescue and rehabilitation of traffic victims.
In addition, a Central Advisory Committee on Child Prostitution, comprised of NGOs and
representatives from UNICEF and UNODC, was implemented to monitor various states’
progress on the Plan of Action. However, action plans have not yet been prepared in all
states, and the budget allocated for the NPA implementation at central and state level
remains very low.

In 2005, the plan failed to reach its goal, signifying little recent improvement regarding
child trafficking in India. In 2009, the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) initiated a
comprehensive four-year ant trafficking plan focusing on two important areas: a) the
development of a specialized group of master trainers, and b) the establishment of anti-
human trafficking units across India. These units were to be comprised of specially
trained officers responsible for human trafficking investigations. The units are comprised
of Anti-Trafficking Cells, which are dedicated to the strengthening of law enforcement
response to the organized crime of human trafficking. The Ministry has initiated 225 Anti-
Human Trafficking Units (AHTU’s) across the country, which has increased the number
of registered cases and strengthened the prosecution procedure. The implementation of
advisories issued by the MHA has played a huge role in the investigation of human
trafficking. By creating mandates for the state government, supervising governmental
procedures, and sending action reports, these advisories have also led to the
strengthening of various legal procedures and investigations of human trafficking cases.
In addition, the advisories participate in capacity building of the law enforcement
agencies. This includes training and helping the prosecutors to become responsive and
aware of the complexities of the criminality of human trafficking, and specifically child
trafficking.

In addition to domestic efforts, the Indian government has also paired with the
Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs to create a helpline for providing immediate support
to victims who are caught in exploitative situations abroad. All of these efforts
demonstrate India’s
International cooperation and acceptance of aid in beginning its efforts towards
investigating human trafficking cases and returning trafficked victims home. However,
while current measure are a good start, they also illustrate a number of shortcomings
within India’s current programs; for example, delegates must consider how applicable
hotlines are for children who are currently being trafficked and lack ready access to
phone lines.

The MHA has also focused many of its efforts specifically on child trafficking. In 2009, the
MHA launched the Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS), which aims to implement
the provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act of 2000. In agreement with this scheme, all
Indian state governments (except those of Jammu and Kashmir) initiated the State Child
Protection Societies
These organizations provide children with a protected and safe environment to grow and
learn, as well as to reduce the risks and vulnerabilities of children in more poverty-
stricken regions.
These societies, provided by the ICPS, supply a child tracking system called Child line: a
24-hour emergency phone service. Furthermore, the groups provide shelters,
sponsorships, Child Welfare Committees (CWCs), and Special Juvenile Police Units for
these communities.
Childline provides its services in semi-urban areas and is used by groups at the state and
regional level. Through these efforts, the ICPS has significantly contributed to the
realization of government and state responsibility for creating a system that will
efficiently and effectively protect children and their rights. Another significant anti-
trafficking effort was the UJJAWALA scheme for trafficked women and children, launched
in December of 2007 by the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
The objectives of the scheme were to: prevent trafficking of women and children for
commercial sexual exploitation through social mobilization and involvement of local
communities; facilitate the rescue of victims from the place of their exploitation and place
them in safe custody; provide rehabilitation services both immediate and long-term to
the victims; facilitate reintegration of victims into their family and community; and
facilitate repatriation of cross-border victims to their country of origin. As of February
2014, UJJAWALA has completed 273 projects, including the building of 151 protective
and rehabilitative homes, which give financial support for shelter and basic amenities, as
well as education and vocational training. As per provisions of the scheme, India’s
national government will continue to receive performance reports from the state
governments, allowing the release of further grants.

The success of UJJAWALA over the years demonstrates that with the proper
implementation and monitoring, programs can have a positive effect and be a step in the
right direction towards the elimination of child trafficking. Starting in mid-2013, certain
states within India have also began using an online database for missing children in
efforts to not only help track them, but also to enable stricter monitoring of child
trafficking into the states. In addition, parents of missing children will also be able to
access and post information about their child on the portal. Proper technological tools for
gaining information and spreading awareness of missing children is an important first
step in solving this aspect of the issue.

Case Study: Maharashtra

The Maharashtra state government has taken many proactive measures to combat
human trafficking, while these measures were mainly directed at women, there were a
number of adolescents and “young adult” women who also benefited from these actions.
In 2007, Maharashtra prepared a State Plan of Action with the participation of various
departments in order to combat trafficking, which set up seven police squads in Mumbai
as well as multiple tasks forces for speedy and proper repatriation of rescued victims of
Bangladesh.

In addition, the Department of Women and Child Development has prepared a special
scheme for vocational training for sex workers in the state of Maharashtra, issuing
protocols for rescue and rehabilitation of victims, which has resulted in the repatriation
of over 70 victims.

The establishment of Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs) in Maharashtra has proven

to bring significant change in combating human trafficking in the state. With the existence
of twelve AHTUs, Maharashtra is equipped with advanced infrastructure including four
wheelers, furniture, and mobile phones. Each AHTU is comprised of fifteen police officers
along with teams of NGOs. After the establishment of the AHTUs in Maharashtra, a total
of 478 rescue operations have been conducted, rescuing over 2,683 victims and arresting
over 1,558 traffickers.
In addition, these units have been instrumental in the closing of over a hundred brothels
since 2011, where police teams were successful in rescuing minors and registering cases
against the brothel keepers. This is an example of how regional efforts used in
conjunction with major national reforms, can effectively make a difference. With the
strengthening of police efforts, regions facing similar issues as Maharashtra can eliminate
trafficking, especially of young, vulnerable children.

CURRENT STATUS
Update: India’s Anti-Trafficking Efforts

Throughout the past year, the Indian government has continued to develop standards
against child trafficking. In 2013, the government of India implemented the National
Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), a commission that pairs with the
Juvenile Justice of Children Act of 2000. It assists the Supreme Court with legislations
relating to children, especially anti-trafficking efforts. The NCPCR has successfully dealt
with a significant number of cases regarding child labour in cotton fields in states such as
Gujarat and Rajasthan, as well as case reports on brick kilns in Rajasthan and Odish,
which are injuries from making pottery.
Most importantly, the NCPCR has undertaken visits to various states in order to monitor
the implementation of Right to Education and Integrated Child Protection Schemes. These
efforts signify India’s brief attempts at monitoring the enforcing of its established
legislation.

Furthermore, New Delhi’s police efforts have recently improved regarding the
implementation of stronger forces. Classified as one of the largest joint rescue operations
between anti-trafficking and railway police and child rights groups, police forces have
recently rescued 63 children and arrested 23 alleged traffickers. The police worked
closely with NGOs, such as Save the Childhood Movement, to ensure the capturing of
traffickers were executed properly when they arrived at the train station. The children
saved were aged between 7 and 17, and their families were told by the traffickers that
they were to work in factories in Delhi and other cities with the ability to send money
home regularly. Promised education and a job by traffickers, these rescued children are
a prime example of how the younger populations from poor, rural areas are made
extremely vulnerable. In most cases, however, these children are not paid and go missing,
leaving their families unable to track them down. While India has shown a few cases of
improvement to track down missing populations, much more needs to be done, politically
and economically, in order to prevent future trafficking. Delegates should consider how
these recent efforts could be improved with the implementation of tracking systems and
proper police procedures.
COMMITTEE MISSION

As SOCHUM’s mandate declares, this committee is responsible for addressing politic

disputes that are on the rise throughout our global community, while most importantly
maintaining focus on ways to develop, advance, and enforce developing nations’ political
structures in order to provide a safer environment for all populations. SOCHUM must
address the current suffering of the families throughout India as in need of immediate,
international attention, as their natural born human rights are at risk, and so is their
survival.

When it comes to assisting India in tracking their lost child populations, this committee
must address the root of the problem: India’s weak economy and inefficient political
structures. Because so much legislation has already been agreed upon both nationally and
internationally, SPECPOL must determine the reasons why these children’s rights are
being blatantly ignored. Until the political and police forces begin enforcing proper
national law and legal procedure, these children will remain vulnerable to being victims
of trafficking for armed conflict and sexual exploitation. As families are torn apart, India’s
government continues to get away with its lack of attention towards its citizens. With the
betterment of India’s economic and political structures, life can be restored to the nation’s
poverty-stricken inhabitants.

As SOCHUM, we cannot enforce the passing of any law but rather can recommend
agreements between and within nations. However, the focus of this committee must be
centered on India’s accountability and its lack of efficient law enforcement. Without the
recognition of legislation that already exists, India cannot take any steps towards the
elimination of missing child populations and trafficking. These trafficking and kidnapping
crimes tend to flourish where children lack stable home environments or financial and
legal security. The global issue of child trafficking, with a severe case in India specifically,
is the result of a constellation of factors, and has evolved into not only a legal and political
issue but a human rights controversy as well.

Questions Your Resolution Should Answer

1. Is your country vulnerable to human trafficking of any kind? If so, what have the
national and state governments dealt with its consequences?
2. Has your country signed, ratified, or acknowledged the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act
of
1956 (ITPA)? If so, has it been successfully implemented?
3. Does your country monitor closely its police force it efforts to prevent political
corruption?
If not, how can that be improved in order to ensure safety of your country’s citizens?
4. What measures does your country take in order to ensure the safety and protection of
children specifically? How can these be applied to India’s case?
5. What international, global efforts should be made regarding the protection of child
populations in UN-member states, particularly those in India?
6. In what ways can SOCHUM assist in the proper implementation of already existing
legislation, especially in India, that protects children and their rights?