SOUTH ASIA: A Lot of Talk, Not Enough Action on Trafficking

By Damakant Jayshi Reprint | | Print |

Damakant Jayshi

DHAKA, Aug 19 2003 (IPS) - Dibya Thapa (not her real name), 20, was instrumental in rescuing about 300 unsuspecting girls in 1997 and 2000 from the Kakarbhitta checkpoint on the Nepal-India border in the eastern part of the Himalayan kingdom.

Dibya is HIV-positive, having got the virus sometime between and 1994 and 1996 in a brothel in Mumbai, India, where she was forced to sell sex before being rescued at the age of 13.

There is no exact data on the number of poor women and girls who are trafficked to India, chiefly to Mumbai, Kolkata and New Delhi, but activists say there is no lack of information about the severity of the problem.

Most of the girls know what they are heading for but some do not and are duped into it, just like Dibya and the girls she helped rescue with timely police intervention.

Today, Dibya, who told her story at the South Asia Court of Women on the Violence of Trafficking and HIV/AIDS here last week, runs a grocery shop in Kathmandu.

But this girl from Butwal, a small town in western Nepal, is also very active in counselling and rehabilitation of similar girls through Nepal Plus, an organisation of about 20 persons, all of who are HIV-positive, that was formed two years ago.

"Dibya is a towering example overcoming such suffering," says Sonam Yangchen Rana of U.N.Development Programme (UNDP) REACH Beyond Borders, or the UNDP Special Initiative on HIV/AIDS Regional Programme for South and North East Asia.

But Dibya herself says, ”I haven’t done much. I wish there was someone at the border to stop me and my trafficker.”

She was also very frank at the conference. "I doubt whether these conferences and similar gatherings can have the desired impact. Honestly speaking, they are ineffective,” she says.

She suggested that U.N. and similar agencies focus more on actual rehabilitation measures and less on seminars and conferences. "The most important point is whether we get justice," Dibya explains.

"Some Bangladeshi girls I spoke to yesterday told me that they are still being harassed by the police. Why is not anyone paying attention to this?" she asks.

Dibya was one of the 40-odd testifiers from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka who spoke in the presence of a jury that also included Winnie Mandela, president of the Women’s League of the African National Congress in South Africa.

All these survivors of trafficking and the resultant violence and discrimination stood courageously in front of the conference audience of about 3,000, mostly comprising women, and narrated their tales of suffering.

Jorgen Lissner, UNDP resident representative for Bangladesh, quoted a U.N. figure according to which about 200,000 women and children are trafficked from the region annually.

Most women and girls from Bangladesh and Nepal end up in brothels in India and Pakistan.

Najma, a 10-year-old from Pakistan, told her ordeal through video testimony. She was made to slog for hours at a carpet factory for a measly 15 Pakistani rupees (26 U.S. cents) a day before being rescued. She demanded punishment for child traffickers.

Sojib, 15-year old from Bangladesh, was forced into camel jockeying in Pakistan and Valli, 26, from India was exploited as a domestic worker.

All the tales had a common thread: poverty. Police brutality and indifferent judicial systems made up the other common elements in almost all the tales.

Bimala (only first name used) criticised the judiciary in Nepal. "When I was being asked all sorts of uncomfortable and embarrassing questions by the lawyers of persons who had tried to traffic me, the judge did not intervene,” she recalls.

The testimonies focused on the judicial system and the law, and the governments’ reaction to anti-trafficking efforts.

Mandela called for more empathy from the legal guardians and governments. "Why do governments turn a blind eye to the sufferings of women? This is baffling." She adds that the trafficking of women was nothing short of "modern slavery".

The symbolic court, the 17th of its kind since the first one that started in Pakistan in 1991, aimed to draw the attention to the plight of women and girls, especially from poor countries, to the perils of trafficking and its link to HIV/AIDS.

UNDP officials point out that since most clients of sex workers are still loathe to use condoms, the women and girls are prone to contracting the virus.

Once that happens, especially in South Asia where AIDS is still poorly understood, another and more horrific nightmare for them starts. Isolation, discrimination and stigma follow soon after. The end begins just then, for most of them.