NEW DELHI, India — With the human trafficking scenario in South Asia steadily worsening, Caritas Internationalis units in the South Asian subcontinent have ventured this year beyond their normal “development and relief” work into a new field: to combat human trafficking in the region.

In some major cities in the region, literally tens of thousands of women and girls — some aged 12 or even younger — are sold into slavery, often as prostitutes. And according to the United Nations, trafficking in human beings could soon surpass trafficking in drugs and guns as the world's most lucrative illegal industry.

Representatives of Caritas — a relief and development agency consisting of 154 Catholic organizations around the world — from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka came together at Katmandu in Nepal in February, along with several non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, actively involved in an anti-trafficking campaign to build a pan-South Asian network.

The meeting came thanks to one of the leading Catholic action groups in Asia, Asia Partnership for Human Development (APHD). The Bangkok-based action group, established in 1973, is an association of 23 Catholic development agencies from Asia, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Discussion on trafficking in South Asia at the 1997 APHD General Assembly “brought home the tragedy and seriousness of the issue,” prompting the partnership to take it up as a regional program, said spokesman Scott Marr. This year's joint initiative of Caritas units in the region is the fruit of several programs on trafficking organized since 1998.

“If the campaign against trafficking is to be effective, first we have to identify and bring together all those working in the field,” said Suganti Subramanian, coordinator of the new initiative of South Asian Caritas units.

As a prelude to get the coalition going, Subramanian, who also heads the Gender Desk of Caritas India, said the South Asian Caritas network has resolved to compile before the end of the year a directory of all the NGOs engaged in combating the flesh trade in the region.

“That will help us build up a strong anti-trafficking campaign,” Subramanian said. Though everyone admits “from observation” that trafficking is going up, she said, there is not a proper database on the extent of the trafficking problem. While the data provided the governments are outdated, NGOs can only give estimates.

“But once the list of NGOs in the field is compiled, we can gather authentic data and use it in our advocacy campaigns,” Subramanian said.

“There is no authentic and reliable data on the actual volume of human trafficking in Bangladesh,” admitted Benedict Alo D'Rozario, the director of disaster management and development department of Caritas Bangladesh. However, D'Rozario estimates that in the last 10 years 200,000 women and girls between 12 and 30 years old have been trafficked from Bangladesh to Pakistan alone. Also, about half the girls and women in the brothels in the neighboring West Bengal state of India are from Bangladesh, he said.

Every year 5,000 to 7,000 Nepali girls are sold out for flesh trade in brothels across India. “But, there is no authentic data as such yet,” acknowledged Rupa Rai of Caritas Nepal. Realizing the gravity of the situation in Nepal that has been suffering for a long time, Rai said, the Caritas unit in the Himalayan kingdom has taken up the anti-trafficking campaign as a “major concern.”

Prevention

Last year Caritas Nepal authored the National Report on Sexual Abuse, Exploitation and Trafficking of Children, published in preparation for the Second World Congress on Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children at Yokohama, Japan. Caritas Nepal also produces programs to be broadcast over the government-controlled radio to make the public aware of the evil of trafficking girls and women.

Apart from bringing dozens of grass-roots NGOs to the anti-trafficking campaign with monetary support and workshops, Rai pointed out that Caritas Nepal is even helping the NGOs set up “village surveillance committees” as part of “prevention focus programs.” Caritas Nepal also has been conducting special seminars for church personnel to make them aware of the alarming levels of trafficking in rural areas where unscrupulous flesh traders lure poor parents with cash advances to send their young daughters for “decent jobs” in India.

Jyotsna Chatterji, a Protestant woman activist whose Joint Women's Program action group has been closely associated with the Caritas anti-trafficking campaign, said at least 30% of the 6,000 prostitutes in the G B Road red-light district in New Delhi are “imports” from Nepal.

“Many of them have told us how their families have been duped into sending them to India on the pretext of job,” said Chatterji, who runs a welfare center for the sex workers in the red-light district.

“’We are no longer human beings with emotions. Our emotions and spirit are dead. We have been reduced to sex machines,’” Chatterji said, explaining the “dehumanizing impact” of the trafficking to the spirit on the victims, who cannot even think of going back to their home-lands where they will be treated as outcasts.

Reiterating that “the rehabilitation of prostitutes is a difficult task,” Chatterji noted that “the best option is to check trafficking.”

The Joint Women's Program, along with Caritas India, has brought out an information kit called “Human Trafficking: How to Address the Issue.” Impressed with the content of the information kit, several Indian state governments and NGOs working among sex workers and trafficked women have ordered copies.

Similarly, Caritas Bangladesh has undertaken a major “awareness-raising campaign” against human trafficking.

“We organize training workshops for the staff of grass-roots level NGOs, government representatives and local elites in trafficking-prone areas,” said D'Rozario of Caritas Bangladesh. Besides distributing thousands of posters and leaflets in the high-risk areas along the border of West Bengal state, the church charity has also supported rehabilitation centers where the rescued trafficked women and children are given job training to make them self-reliant.

Father John Noronha, executive director of Caritas India, said the anti-trafficking campaign has not been “in our focus as we have been concentrating primarily on development and relief work.”

“But now we realize that trafficking is counterproductive to the development work we are doing. Trafficking is negating the fruits we look for through women-oriented literacy and development projects,” Father Noronha admitted.

Apart from trafficking from other countries, he added, trafficking within the country is a “major problem.” Agents of brothel owners rush to poverty-stricken and disaster-hit areas to look for easy targets.

Exploiting Tragedy

There was a sudden spurt in trafficking in young girls in the eastern Orissa state after the state was ravaged by a devastating cyclone two years ago, Father Noronha said. “Desperately in need of money to survive, hapless parents fall easy victims to the promises made by the agents,” he added.

“We need tough laws to combat the problem,” acknowledged Subramanian, South Asian Caritas’ anti-trafficking initiative coordinator. “But unless we have a strong network to lobby with the government, our campaign will not bear fruit.” That is why, she pointed out, “we have decided as the first step to prepare a directory of all the NGOs in the field before we proceed to the more active level of lobbying” for legislation and government action to curb trafficking, repatriation and rehabilitation of the victims.

Anto Akkara writes from New Delhi, India.