Fighting Human Trafficking (#3) – Key Findings

Scale of the problem

A key challenge facing anti-human trafficking initiatives is the sheer scale of the problem. With an estimated 40.3 million victims of human trafficking globally, all indications are that this number has been rising rapidly since 2010 and its growth is set to continue. The crime of human trafficking is seen as high profit and very low risk for perpetrators, attracting more and more organised criminal networks. This challenge is global, rather than being specific to India; but this global nature adds its own challenges and complexities when discussing national and regional strategies.

Furthermore, according to many highly respected members of the Fellowship, such as Dr Goswami, Dr Achyuta Samata and Dr Sunitha Krishnan, the supply of potential victims in India is large compared to that of many other nations. This is partly because of India’s huge 1.4 billion population, but also because of poverty and a lack of educational awareness, which stem from economic difficulties, lack of employment opportunities, and illiteracy in certain areas. This makes those areas obvious and easy targets for perpetrators, with an estimated 30% of victims being children.

Legislation and poor conviction rates

Conviction rates for human trafficking are low despite widespread support for anti-human trafficking initiatives.

Some members of the Fellowship voiced concerns that the current laws on human trafficking, such as the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act, the Bonded Labour Act, and even certain sections of the Indian Penal Code, focus on criminalizing the perpetrators at the destination end of the trafficking network rather than the perpetrators at the source. For example, some argued that brothel managers and employees are heavily criminalized but the traffickers themselves are not.

Many members of the fellowship call for legal reform in this area, claiming gaps in the law are contributing to low conviction rates.

Regional and state borders

Each of the state governments in India has created a number of Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs). The AHTUs are associated to local police stations, which are assigned to maintain law and order within the precinct in which they are located. They are not generally charged with investigating crimes across borders. As such, the AHTUs are sometimes empowered to investigate human trafficking cases at either destination or source, but not at both. Currently, some state governments seem to have limited means of coordinating systems of anti-human trafficking activity across borders effectively.

These frustrations and their impact on conviction rates are having a detrimental effect on morale at the AHTUs. This also contributes to the strain on relationships between local police and NGOs.

Constraints on policing

The resourcing of the AHTUs varies from state to state. In many locations, the only means of manning the AHTUs is to assign additional responsibilities to existing police officers. Most AHTUs have seen superb results in attracting talent and willing volunteers over the last decade, and many still do. More recently, though, the ability to recruit willing, high performing police officers to man these AHTUs seems to be declining in most areas.

Many members of the AHTUs, and the NGOs with whom they work, argue that some AHTU officers do not have adequate time, resources or infrastructure to investigate cases properly. Poor investigations contribute to low conviction rates, which demoralise the AHTU police further. They then often avoid filing first information reports (FIRs) because of the perceived wasted effort.

All these factors, which contribute to low conviction rates, affect morale at the AHTUs and make recruitment for AHTUs much more challenging.

Lack of reports being received by police

Dr P M Nair suggested that there is a general unwillingness to report incidents to police. Dr P M Nair is Chair Professor and Research Coordinator at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and has served as Special Director General of Police, Central Reserve Police Force, India; and as a professional investigator and supervisory official of the Indian Police Service at the Central Bureau of Investigation for the Government of India. He has spent over 3 decades working on child rights and anti-human trafficking initiatives.

This lack of reporting compounds the problem for police; and prevents central and state governments from gathering empirical evidence on the scale of the problem. Empirical evidence is required by government to measure progress and influence policy making to drive improvements. Dr P M Nair called for NGOs to reach out to their local police, to build better relationships and increase the volume of incident reporting.

His sentiment was echoed by Dr G K Goswami, Inspector General of Police in Uttar Pradesh, P Vijayan, Inspector General of Police, Kochi Range; and M Mahender Reddy, Director General of Police, Telangana State.

They cited that many families and communities whose children are sold into human trafficking do not report their children as missing. They also cited that many individuals who are being exploited do not report the matter to the police, and that large numbers of citizens witnessing human exploitation do not report the incidents to the police either.

Lack of incentive to report to police

Several NGOs, victims and other members of the Fellowship corroborated the view that incidents are often not reported to police. The reasons cited were mostly associated to a lack of confidence that any action would be taken, a lack of trust, and a poor working relationship between police and NGOs.

Although it was acknowledged that some NGOs actually had very good working relationships with specific individuals in their local AHTUs, they, nonetheless, worry that those AHTU individuals leave or move on from their posting frequently, and the NGOs have neither the time nor the manpower required to rebuild the relationships with their AHTU successors.

Parul Singh from the Head Held High Foundation, and Director of the Global Action on Poverty Intensive Programme, was one who highlighted that reporting to police is effective only while the NGO has an effective point of contact within the local police. Where that point of contact moves on, as is frequently the case, the effectiveness of the relationship with police breaks down. Parul Singh suggested that the situation would improve if, for example, every local police department had a dedicated senior ‘champion’ of human trafficking, working with the NGO or non-profit organisation on the frontline.

(Note that not all NGOs and police AHTUs suffer from poor working relationships with each other; some enjoy very effective relationships; but this was certainly a significant theme of the Fellowship’s findings).

Conflicting assessments of severity

The Fellowship found that the police’s assessment of the state of human trafficking locally conflicted enormously with the assessment of local NGOs and non-profit organisations; i.e. the NGOs generally assessed the situation to be much more serious than the police’s assessment. For example, at the beginning of the Fellowship’s workshop in Delhi, one senior representative of the Delhi police was quoted as saying “there is no human trafficking in India”.

The cause of the conflicting assessments is largely attributed to the lack of reporting highlighted previously. That said, many of the police representatives, on immersing themselves extensively with the other members of the Fellowship, changed their appraisal of the situation by the end of the Fellowship’s week-long workshop in Delhi. The strong desire from all parties of the Fellowship to address the situation is clearly apparent.

Misalignment over key performance indicators (KPIs)

In many areas, NGOs have taken on responsibility for local anti-human trafficking initiatives at the source and / or destination of the trafficking networks; for example, the running of shelters for victims. The NGOs are mostly dependent on third-party funding or state budgets. That funding is often linked to evidence on metrics such as the number of victims being rescued.

There is clearly much courageous and commendable work underway in rescuing victims across the whole of India. All members of the Fellowship agreed that the rescue of victims must remain the highest priority and that the outstanding work already being done by courageous individuals must continue to be fully resourced and funded.

Some members of the Fellowship, however, also expressed major concerns that the act of measuring performance mainly on the number of victims rescued was not addressing the root cause, nor addressing the increasing scale and severity of the situation. Some argued that rescued victims can easily and quickly return to the trafficking network, mainly because the victims and perpetrators involved at the source of the network act out of severe desperation and poverty, and a lack of awareness. The opinion expressed by some was that the metrics being measured to assess performance were not driving the right improvements.

There are different opinions on which key metrics should drive improvement. These differences in opinion are contributing to the misalignment between NGOs and AHTUs. This can only be corrected by clear alignment at the strategy and policy level from central and state government. Conflicting views on how best to prioritise limited police time and resources in the fight against human trafficking is undoubtedly contributing to poor relations between stakeholders.

Working in disparate silos

With no common strategy across disparate organisations, different stakeholders are tending to pursue their own specific objectives independently of other stakeholders. This becomes more apparent when discussing the sharing of data. Members of the Fellowship unanimously agreed that crucial data was not being shared across organisations.

Representatives from the National Commission for the Protection of Children’s Rights (NCPCR) called for a shared central database. Rekha Sharma, Chairperson of the National Commission for Women (NCW) also called for more collaboration across stakeholders.

The under-sharing of data became more apparent when visiting the premises of NGOs. For example, FXB India Suraksha is a prominent member of the Fellowship. It is a non-profit organisation providing development assistance to marginalised children, women and communities in rural and urban India. The organisation has been involved with Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs) in the rescue of over 200 children from forced child labour trafficking. Their project, Childline Services, is in operation in over 550 cities across India and is a flagship program of the Ministry of Women and Child Development under its Integrated Child Protection Scheme. The organisation has accumulated large amounts of highly relevant trafficking data from the 550 cities, but the data is not being shared with other stakeholders. Furthermore, most of the data is not stored electronically and is, therefore, very difficult to share effectively.

Satya Prakesh, Programme Manager, and Mamta Borgoyary, CEO, both of FXB India Suraksha, were highly enthusiastic about proposals to make better use of this valuable data, and they were interested in suggestions for processing the data in a way which made it available and useful for other stakeholders electronically.

The same sentiment was emphasised by Renu Sharma, President of the B & S Foundation, which provides livelihoods with dignity for under-privileged women in India.

Data privacy concerns

Many members of the Fellowship expressed strong concerns that the sharing of information could conflict with the protection of personal data. Some referred to the Supreme Court of India’s ruling, in 2017, that privacy is a constitutional right of Indian citizens.

Several of the keynote speakers of the Fellowship highlighted the Government of Indian’s plan to legislate a Data Protection Bill, (DPB). The key driver of the DPB is to protect and safeguard the privacy rights of the citizens of India as they leave growing trails of personal data while navigating the increasingly digital world.

The latest draft of the DPB is under review; it sets out controls for the collection, processing, storage, usage, transfer, protection, and disclosure of personal data of Indian residents. It is widely agreed, that the Government of India’s draft DPB is closely aligned to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in allowing global companies to conduct business under certain conditions, instead of following the isolationist framework of Chinese regulation, which prevents global players (like Facebook and Google) from operating openly within its borders. Yet, the Indian DPB, it seems, will carry additional provisions beyond the EU regulation. For example, the data generated by Indian citizens is likely to be treated as a national asset, stored and guarded within national boundaries, with the Government of India reserving the right to use that data to safeguard its defence and strategic interests.

In particular, members of the National Commission for Women (NCW), when the Fellowship visited their premises in Delhi, raised concerns about processing and storing data outside India, to the extent, they said, that any solution requiring personal data to be processed or stored outside India, would not be viable.

Government visibility

The figures often quoted in the domain of human trafficking are merely estimates; there is very little empirical evidence available. Currently, neither the Government of India, nor the state governments, have reliable visibility of the scale of human trafficking, or of the emerging geographical trends within their national borders and across their international borders. None of the NGOs, police, or government agencies are currently equipped to be able to provide this visibility either. As such, the conflicting assessments of the severity of the situation are unhelpful, as are the conflicting speculations of the emerging geographical trends.

The first objective must be to provide the Government of India, and state governments, with the visibility it needs to inform on policy and national strategy. Without this visibility, the Government of India and state governments must currently rely on a bottom-up approach to tackling human trafficking regionally; but this will continue to be ineffective because of the insights highlighted.

One of the key challenges, therefore, is not in implementing new ways to improve relationships between NGOs and police, nor encouraging NGOs to submit more reports to police, nor measuring police on the number of victims rescued or perpetrators charged. These can only go so far until there is greater alignment and scrutiny of national strategic priorities. The key challenge is empowering the Government of India and state governments with the tools they need to measure the scale of the problem and to provide data-driven metrics to support evidence-driven decisions on policy and strategy.

International borders

The scale of human trafficking is growing. Widely publicised figures estimate human trafficking as a $150 billion global industry. As it grows, the trafficking networks become more likely to cross international borders. Undoubtedly, not all human trafficking networks in India operate across international borders, but many do. An initial challenge is in being able to identify those that are operating across international borders so that collaborative initiatives can be implemented, measured, and improved upon. To be effective, any solution addressing cross border trafficking must be implemented in collaboration with international partners.

In most cases, the individual parts of a trafficking network may not, on their own, look like they are part of a larger organised network. For example, none of the perpetrators may necessarily have any knowledge of other parts of the wider network; they often make their profit from a small piece of the chain and are unlikely to even know some of the other perpetrators involved. Despite this, the criminal networks can grow organically, with each perpetrator able to make their profit in isolation and with little overall coordination required.

Human trafficking across India’s international borders is in both directions. Victims are not just being trafficked out of India; they are also being trafficked into India. For example, a recent report from BBC Africa Eye, in December 2019, highlighted an illegal network, luring women to India from Africa, where they are then forced into sex work to satisfy the demands of the many African men living in Delhi.

To address human trafficking in any one country, all indicators of related activity on a global scale must be captured and processed together in order to provide useful analysis for each nation state. On this global scale, these indicators could come from many sources, including financial services institutions, corporate supply chains, news and media reports, international entry and exit points, migration and exploitation reports, public observations, police reports, and NGO reports.

The sharing of data internationally is a challenge, just as is the sharing of data across stakeholders within India.

Corporate stakeholder visibility

Top level policy and strategy is not solely the domain of government. National and international corporations, for example, are highly motivated to ensure their labour markets and supply chains do not exploit, nor contribute to, human trafficking. Similarly, national and international financial services institutions are highly motivated to identify and eliminate money laundering from organised criminal networks involved in human trafficking activity.

The same visibility required by government to debate and set policy, is also required by corporations and financial services institutions to inform on their compliance with national and international law and ethical standards. Once provided with such visibility, corporations and financial services institutions would be highly incentivised to take clear and decisive action to remove the supply of money from the human trafficking networks. These outcomes, including the active removal of money supply, would be a huge source of support to the Government of India in tackling the problem in a top-down approach.

A key challenge is in capturing and presenting the relevant data to the required stakeholders in order to make this happen.

Police and NGO visibility

There is a lack of shared visibility between police and NGOs in most areas. Furthermore, one of the challenges associated to the localised nature of the AHTUs and NGOs, is the lack of shared visibility across regional and state borders. Without common visibility of emerging trends, it becomes impossible to co-ordinate policing and NGO activity, or to measure and improve on the results. In a cohesive strategy, the same visibility required by central and state governments and corporations is also required by local police and NGOs.