Social activist and ‘Padma Shri’ awardee Sunitha Krishnan said that every 10 minutes one person is trafficked in India.
Nearly three million children and women are trafficked for sexual slavery. Of them, nearly 45 per cent are said to be children.
She was speaking on ‘Context and Needs of Children’ at the Legal Awareness Programme on NALSA (Child Friendly Legal Services to Children and their Protection) Scheme 2015 organised by the Union Territory of Puducherry Legal Services Authority (UTPLSA) in Puducherry on Saturday.
According to the Global Slavery Index 2016, there are nearly 18 million modern slaves in India, who are victims of forced labour ranging from prostitution and begging.
“This is the highest in the world,” said Sunitha Krishnan. She added that nearly 73 per cent of the children in prostitution suffer from traumatic brain injuries. They suffer from sexually transmitted diseases, reproductive tract infections, alcohol and substance abuse.
Having worked directly in 11 States, Sunitha Krishnan has helped, rescued and rehabilitated nearly 16,000 children from prostitution. She co-founded Prajwala in Hyderabad in 1996 along with Brother Jose Vetticatil, a catholic missionary.
Sharing her experience of working with these children, she said children pushed into commercial sex face a lifetime of exploitation. “This trade is lucrative only to the brothel keepers, traffickers, goons and pimps. The children are subjected to torture leading to Stockholm syndrome and normalisation of exploitation. This is one of the reasons why many victims turn hostile,” she said.
Calling for a change in the discourse of addressing sexual exploitation, she said: “We do not discuss why there is a demand for flesh trade, the attitude and perception of men towards women, what makes a man a compulsive sex buyer and what pushes a young man into porn addiction? What makes him an offender? What socio-cultural factors turn a boy to an offender?”
She underlined that legalising sex work was not going to bring down the sexual exploitation present in prostitution.
“We need to address the problem from another perspective and intervene in an organised manner. However, the stakeholders are still ill-equipped to handle the peculiarity of the crime. We have to get together and think how to re-strategise the methods to help thousands of children from becoming victims of sex trafficking,” she said. The social activist added that most of the hurdles in attaining justice would be cleared if everyone executes their duty correctly and conscientiously.
