In 1950 the Federal government of India ratified the International Convention for the Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Individuals and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of others. In 1956 India passed the Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls Act, 1956 (SITA). The act was further amended and altered in 1986, leading to the Immoral Traffic Avoidance Act likewise called PITA. PITA only goes over trafficking in relation to prostitution and not in relation to other purposes of trafficking such as domestic work, kid labour, organ harvesting, and so on.
The following is a summary of the arrangements in this law that relates to children below the age of 18. The act defines kid as any person who has completed eighteen years of age. The very first section of the act has provisions that outline the illegality of prostitution and the punishment for owning a brothel or a comparable establishment, or for living of earnings of prostitution as is in the case of a pimp.
Section 5 of the act mentions that if a person obtains, causes or takes a kid for the function of prostitution then the jail sentence is a minimum of seven years however can be extended to life. To ensure that individuals in the chain of trafficking are also called to account the act has a provision that mentions that anybody associated with the recruiting, carrying, moving, harbouring, or getting of individuals for the purpose of prostitution if guilty of trafficking. In addition any individual attempting to dedicate trafficking or found in the whorehouse or visiting the brothel is punishable under this law.
If a person if discovered with a kid it is presumed that he has apprehended that child there for the function of sexual intercourse and for this reason shall be punishable to seven year in prison as much as life imprisonment, or a term which may extend to 10 year and likewise a maximum fine of one lakh rupees.
If a child is found in a brothel and after medical examination has been found to have been sexually abused, it is assumed that the child has been detained for the purpose of prostitution. Any person committing prostitution in public with a child shall be punishable to seven year in prison up to life imprisonment, or a term which may extend to ten year and also a maximum fine of one lakh rupees. If prostitution of a child is being committed with knowledge of an establishment owner such as a hotel the license of the hotel is likely to be cancelled along with the given prison sentence and/or fines.
Any child found in a brothel or being abused for the purpose of prostitution can be placed in an institution for their safety by a magistrate. Landlords, leasers, owner, agent of the owner who unknowingly previously rented their property to a person found guilty of prostituting a child, must get approval from a magistrate before re-leasing their property for three years after the order is passed. In 2006, the Ministry of Women and Child Development proposed an amendment bill that has yet to be passed. The amendment does not really concern any of the provisions related to the child but has many important consequences for the right of women sex workers
Article 3, paragraph (a) of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons defines Trafficking in Persons as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.
Human trafficking, is a part of the larger problem of slavery. Human trafficking is one of the most common way people end up in slavery. While the term is increasingly used instead of the word “slavery”, this is misleading. The term is often misused when it is confused with human smuggling. In essence, human trafficking is when people are transported, by force or deception, to become enslaved. By transported, we are typically talking between countries, but people can become trafficked within their own country.
The UN’s definition, which is the one most other countries including the US base their definition is : Trafficking in Persons as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs. http://www.madebysurvivors.com/humantrafficking
Statistics are often hard to come by in this field. Trafficking is an illegal industry so finding out just how many victims there are annually is difficult. Conservative estimates say that 15,000 people are trafficked into the U.S. annually, while others guess the number is high at 60,000. It is reasonable to say that whichever number or wherever in between the truth lay, the number is one too many. Finding local statistics may also be difficult, but local organizations are better equipped to tell you how big of a problem trafficking is in your area.
Ideally, you need to know the number of persons trafficked locally, the number of victims presenting as emergency care patients, and the number of survivors who escaped because of hospital intervention. Also important to know are which facilities the referrals are coming from. States with the greatest concentration of trafficked persons are New York, California, and Florida; Washington DC also has a large trafficked population.