India Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Shared Hope International

Ari’s story begins in Secundrabad, Andhra Pradesh. As an infant, her mother ran from her unfaithful husband and took Ari to live on the streets of Pune, surviving only by begging at the railway station. When Ari was five years old, tragedy struck as the hard street life claimed her mother, leaving Ari alone and desperate.

Ari was adopted by her mother’s friend but was soon sold to a brothel. At first, Ari was used for housework, but at eight years old she was forced into the sex trade. When she refused customers, she was beaten with an iron rod. Her fragile body was not able to tolerate the pain and she became paralyzed on one side. With this condition, she was unable to satisfy the demands of her exploitation and was sent to the hospital for treatment.

Ari recalls a pimp saying:

“If she recovers bring her back if she dies throw somewhere and don’t mention it to anyone.”

While in the hospital, Ari met a social worker who took great pity on her and placed her in a shelter once she recovered. What could have been reprieve proved dangerous. After witnessing the death of three children due to poor care, Ari and a young boy fled the shelter. Ari learned the boy had a 10-year-old sister enslaved in the red-light district of Pune. Ari helped rescue the sister and, with the help of police and a social worker, was able to rescue three other young girls from the brothel.

Alone again, Ari survived by begging on the streets. At 13 years old, she married a street boy, with whom she endured a dangerously violent marriage. When she gave birth to their daughter, Nan, her husband attempted to kill them by dousing them with kerosene and trying to burn them. Her mother-in-law rescued Ari and Nan but they quickly fled to the streets of Pune. With a child and no one to care for them, Ari became desperate and was forced to do what she despised the most, sell sex to survive. During this time, Ari married again and gave birth to a second daughter, Sajni.

In her darkest hour of desperation, help arrived. Our partner in India met Ari and Nan and brought them home to a loving community where they receive spiritual support and education. Though Ari was born into poverty and sold into slavery, she was rescued into freedom. Today Ari and Nan are thriving with the help of Shared Hope and our partner in India.

The 10^th annual Trafficking in Persons report (TIP report) was released in June and placed India on the Tier 2 Watch List for the seventh consecutive year. However, India should drop to Tier 3 because of all the corruption of political and law enforcement officials as well as the lack of arrests, prosecutions, and services provided by the government.

Historically, India has been known to be a source, transit, and destination country for human trafficking. All types of human slavery occur within the country—labor, sex, domestic victims, foreign victims, trafficking of men, women, and children. The history of India’s human trafficking issue varies by region. For example, in Mumbai exists the largest red-light district in Asia—Kamathipura. The area first began as a place for British troops to relax and “be comfortable.” In about the 19^th century, women and girls were trafficked to work as prostitutes for the British and Indian men. The British eventually left India and the region was taken over by Indian sex-workers and traffickers. More recently, many women and girls from Nepal are also trafficked into Kamathipura to work as sex slaves. It will take a lot of patience and hard-work to undo what was begun in Kamathipura. That is just one story of the MANY large red-light districts in India.

This year’s TIP report contained a comprehensive summary and many statistics on human trafficking in India. To access the full report on India click here, for a brief summary see below:

– Only a few states (such as Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu) showed significant improvement in enforcing laws

– The amount of police corruption that occurs in India is large and rampant

– NGOs are the key players in the anti-trafficking movement

– India has a slow & backed-up court system that contributes to injustice

– Some laws meant to rescue, restore, and protect victims are used to punish them (Section 8 of the ITPA and the Foreigner’s Act)

– 38 AHTUs (Anti Human Trafficking Units) in police departments are responsible for investigating human trafficking cases, and are meant to be comprised of specially-trained police officers

– There have been recently more prosecutions fully processing in places such as Delhi (several stories mentioned in the TIP report)

india-2010-016 — SHI Staff with the lovely ladies at Ashagram

India has been put on the “Tier 2 watch list” in the TIP report for the seventh consecutive year. This ranking is the second to lowest in which “the government does not fully comply with the TVPA’s minimum standards, but is making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards,” and there is either an increasing number of victims or little to no evidence of efforts to combat slavery.

“Why has India been on the watch list for so long and not dropped to a Tier 3?” It is rumored that our diplomatic relations prevent India from dropping to Tier 3. However, since amendments were made by the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, India may drop to a Tier 3 next year. The amendment states that any country that has been ranked Tier 2 Watch List for two consecutive years (beginning from the time of the 2009 report) and that would otherwise be ranked Tier 2 Watch List for the next year will instead be ranked Tier 3 country, thus facing sanctions.

India has the necessary legislation to tackle human trafficking through prosecution of traffickers/clients and provision of services to victims. Unfortunately, these laws are ineffectively enforced and traffickers often go unpunished and victims are often left unassisted. Legislation is sometimes used against victims, such as Section 8 of the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act (ITPA) which prohibits the act of solicitation for prostitution. It was used in some states to detain and penalize women in prostitution that often included trafficking victims (several state governments – such as Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu – discouraged its use). The TIP report repeatedly noted that NGOs are leading the fight against human trafficking because the Indian government is slow, corrupt, and seemingly powerless.

Shared Hope International was initially founded to respond to the horrors of sex-trafficking in India. Just 2 hours north of Mumbai (Bombay), Shared Hope International funds Bombay Teen Challenge to operate the 72-acre Village of Hope in India called “Ashagram.”

pb5 — Ladies of the WIN program proudly
show their products.

At the Village of Hope more than 140 female survivors of sex trafficking are provided with safety, security, medical care, emotional care, literacy training, educational training, and access to vocational facilities that provide a variety of options for economic development through the WIN program. Shared Hope also partners with Bombay Teen Challenge to operate a HIV/AIDS clinic that serves more than 2,000 people in and around the brothel district of Mumbai each year through providing protein packed meals, counseling, ART (anti-retroviral treatment) and other services. These programs have seen many women, like Ganga, become fully restored women who return to the brothel district to help others survive their victimization.

To include all information about India’s anti-trafficking efforts would take a long time since India is a country of 1 billion people. I encourage you to even go beyond the links to educate yourself on the issue of human trafficking because it is a very important step in ending modern-day-slavery.

Ari’s Story of Hope

Anti-Trafficking Report: India