The trafficking bill can hurt victims and activists
Sexual exploitation hasn’t found mention in either the definition section or in its criminal provisions
The Centre has passed the Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill, 2018, in the Lok Sabha that leaves out millions of victims of sex trafficking from its very definition. While the Bill mentions that “trafficking in human beings may be for sexual and physical exploitation,” sexual exploitation is not mentioned either in the definitions section or in the criminal provisions.
In 2011, India ratified the Palermo Protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children. So, it has an obligation to implement it domestically. The Bill refers to another law — Section 370 of the IPC — to define sex trafficking. But by not explicitly mentioning sexual exploitation in definitions, while explicitly mentioning trafficking for labour, marriage and begging, the Bill creates ambiguity. This vagueness in definitions gives more power to the police and judiciary, who will become the interpreters of the law.
Combined with powers of surveillance that the Bill bestows on the National AntiTrafficking Bureau in the name of investigating cases and coordinating between law enforcement agencies and NGOs, it is likely to be used against victims and activists. Thousands of victims, many of them illiterate, will have to depend on the mercy of the station officer, to interpret the words in the Bill’s statement of objects, to even register a police complaint against their traffickers. Interestingly, the Bill places the blame for trafficking exclusively on “poverty, illiteracy and lack of livelihood options,” and not in any way, shape or form, on sex/gender/caste inequality as a significant vulnerability to being trafficked. This lets the government off the hook in punishing buyers and traffickers for sexual exploitation.
The passage of the Bill, bypassing the demands of several MPs to send it to a Standing Committee for further scrutiny, is odd. It is similar to 2016, when, by removing millions of children in family based-enterprises and audio-visual entertainment from the definition of child labour, in the Child Labour Act, the government was able to show that child labour had come down in India.The National Crime Records Bureau revealed that rapes of children spiked by 82 % in the following year. Victims of sex trafficking, too, will continue to be raped for profit and their numbers will increase, as there will be impunity for traffickers and difficulties for victims in even defining who they are. Government data may show that child labour and sex trafficking have come down, but the flesh and blood experiences of millions of vulnerable girls will tell a different story.