Human Trafficking: Modern Day’s Slavery
INTRODUCTION
A serious public health issue that affects people of all racial backgrounds, socioeconomic classes, age groups, and genders is human trafficking. Every population faces the constant threat of trafficking. Greed, quota-driven behavior, a disregard for human rights, preying on the weak, and harm to the psychological and physical wellbeing of their victims are all characteristics of human traffickers. To define and direct community-based treatment, protocols, and official curriculum revisions, more study is needed to determine the degree of the economic and social repercussions on society.
Human trafficking, often known as trafficking in persons, is a modern-day form of slavery that entails the forced or fraudulent transportation of people for the purpose of work, sexual exploitation, or other acts from which others profit financially. Human trafficking is an issue that affects people all over the world.
MEANING
Trafficking refers to an unlawful commerce. Human trafficking is the practice of trading with other people. Humans are trafficked for the purposes of forced marriage, forced labour, domestic servitude, commercial sexual exploitation, organ or tissue harvesting. The third-largest organized crime in the world, behind the trafficking of drugs and the trade in weapons, is human trafficking.
Women and children are the main targets of this practice worldwide, where it is primarily done for sexual exploitation. There are many reasons why people are trafficked, but unhappily, our country only has a law called the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act (ITPA) that combats this practice when it is carried out with the intention of sexual exploitation.
THE CAUSES OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING
Human trafficking occurs for a variety of causes. Political, economic, and cultural forces influence them. According to the supply and demand theory, there is human trafficking. First, there are a number of issues in the nation, including the lack of political and economic stability, the need for jobs, poverty, social conditions, and instances of armed or war conflicts. Second, low-cost goods, low-cost labour, and low-cost services are in demand in industrialized and wealthy nations.
By combining the first and second instances, the organized crime groups have discovered a way to connect supply and demand and generate enormous profits. These factors result in increasing migration, but limited migration as a result of several governmental laws. People who engage in human trafficking expose themselves to abuse, brutality, and dishonesty by using illegal means to transport people.
THE REPERCUSSIONS OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING
In the course of trafficking in persons, the victim is mistreated and exploited under circumstances that can lead to minor and long-term psychological and physical attacks, illnesses, including STDs or HIV viruses. This illness has the potential to cause both death and lasting impairment.
Aggression, despair, confusion, isolation, and attention problems are all direct effects of human trafficking. Numerous studies have demonstrated that traumas and injuries suffered throughout the course of trafficking can persist for a considerable amount of time even after the victim has been freed from exploitation. This is most often the case when the victim is not provided with the appropriate treatment and guidance.
The tragic thing about human trafficking victims is that their rights continue to be violated even when they are released from the position of exploitation. They frequently become victims again. The willingness of the trafficked individuals to collaborate with the appropriate authorities directly affects the protection offered to them in many of the countries. However, this conditional protection is in conflict with the full enjoyment and preservation of human rights, and it is forbidden to employ trafficked individuals as tools in legal procedures.
LEGAL FRAMEWORK IN INDIA TO COUNTER HUMAN TRAFFICKING
- 1860 Indian Penal Code
Surprisingly, the IPC, which was established in 1860, covers the issue of human trafficking. Sections 370 and 370A of the IPC discuss it. It forbade the trafficking of women and girls and outlined harsh penalties for offenders. According to the law, anyone found guilty of purchasing or selling a person under the age of 18 for the purpose of prostitution, sexual exploitation, or any other immoral activity faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine.
It also recognizes cross-border prostitution trafficking, and anyone caught bringing a girl under the age of 21 into India from another country with the intention of forcing her into illicit relationships with other people or knowing that it is likely that she will be seduced into such relationships faces up to a 10-year prison sentence as well as a fine.
- Indian Constitution, 1949
The Indian Constitution forbids human trafficking and upholds many of the internationally recognized different human rights norms, including the right to life and personal liberty, the right to equality, the right to freedom, and the right to be free from exploitation assured as one of the fundamentals rights of any person living in India.
- The 1986 Immoral Traffic Prevention Act
The worldwide Convention for the Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of Others as Prostitutes was ratified by the Indian government in 1950. The government of India passed the Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls Act (SITA) in 1956 as a result of this ratification of the agreement. The Immoral Traffic Prevention Act, 1986 (PITA), a further amendment and revision to the original law, was passed in 1986.
CONCLUSION
To ensure that the laws against human trafficking are effective in preventing the crime, they must be tightened. To stop them, it is important to educate those living below the poverty line nationwide about human trafficking and its effects in order to prevent them from becoming its victims.
Conferences and numerous national and international seminars can be held all across the nation in order for the general public and the government to work together to stop human trafficking.
Only those who live in poverty are vulnerable to human trafficking, so the government must protect them. The crime of human trafficking can be greatly reduced if the government assists the underprivileged members of society and gives them access to adequate education and employment.
By Kripali Agarwal
BBA.LLB 1ST Year
Banasthali Vidyapith