A Caritas India project has exposed the Child Trafficking problems of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh with the outer world.  A sample study of 75 villages from Assam and Arunachal Pradesh revealed 2 trafficking, 28 missing, 68 child labour and 60 cases of domestic work by children.

Child Trafficking and Child Labour has been a part of the socio-cultural thread of Northeast customs. This has been present unintentionally in this geographic belt and the truth is more complicated. The fact is, the northeast part of India faces an acute shortage of livelihood and employment which forces children and youth to seek employment outside their place of dwelling. Parents send their children to do odd jobs in tea estates, shops, agriculture, or domestic work to seek a better life. This gives opportunities to the traffickers to lure the young generation of a well-paid job.

In 2016 alone, nearly 16,000 children were reported missing as of April 2018 but only around 7,000 have been traced so far. In Assam, 9,500 children went missing from different places between 2007 and June 2014 but only 3,840 children have been recovered so far. According to a newspaper report, 25 children were missing from one tea garden alone. Even if we take half the number of that, it runs into 10,000 missing children from tea gardens in the past years. Almost 80 percent of the local children (from the tea tribes) are recruited in Arunachal Pradesh as domestic help, agricultural labourers, daily wage labourers, and as unskilled labour force. Crime against children is rising alarmingly in Arunachal Pradesh, and much of the blame rests with agencies tasked with preventing it due to the difference in their perspectives and attention for lucrative intended support mechanism.

The findings helped Caritas India to initiate a development programme to Combat Human Trafficking in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. The programme is implemented through five partners with 15 villages each; 4 partners in Assam and 1 in Arunachal Pradesh that covers 75 villages altogether.

The program is making a gradual impact with intensive strive to create awareness on the trafficking and child labour issues. However, unlike other development programs due to its sensitive nature, it takes a good amount of time to induce and create community realisation. Programme participants have reasons for their cold response as they were embittered and bluffed with cultural dogma. But these issues are now distanced and getting healed as equated to the initial entry. Thus, in many pockets, initially, the strive was sluggish and could not make much progress.

As a first step, Caritas India is creating community awareness on the prevention of human trafficking, rights of women and children and service providers. The awareness is created among school children, and Gram Panchayat level to promote strong village safety net mechanism to prevent Human Trafficking

In a recent training organised for panchayats leaders by the Seva Kendra Silchar partner on 10th August 2019. Ms. Puja, from Social welfare and Mr.Debashish Deb from Childline department Silchar, shared the contextual clarity on the human trafficking issues. 53 members from the panchayat participated in the training programme.

“Human Trafficking is a social evil and the root causes in the rural set up”, shared Ms. Puja. She briefly shared the roles and responsibilities of the panchayat members in each ward. She said, everyone, is equally responsible and advocated for a strong village vigilance Committee which will act as a watchdog and an effective channel to combat human trafficking.

Mr. Debashish also spoke about Child Labour and its effects on society and how it is related to human trafficking. A Short documentary film on human trafficking and Child labour was screened to bring awareness on the issue.

Caritas India and partners are working to restore the dignity of women, youth, and children by providing requisite technical knowledge and skills for a feasible long-term solution of trafficking in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.