Child trafficking in India: A staid predicament

Every day, children are being bought, sold and transported away from their homes. The trafficking of human beings particular children has become a multi-dollar business that appears to be growing. Child trafficking is illegal. It is also extremely harmful, as trafficked children are physically and sexually exploited. The United Nations estimates that 246 million children across the world are involved in exploitative labour and that 1.2 million children are trafficked each year. About one million children are exploited in the multi-billion dollar sex industry. Next to drug and gun trafficking, human trafficking is the third top criminal industry in the world. What used to be reported as a one billion dollar trade annually in early 2000, is now reported to generate a yearly profit of around US$ 10–12 Billion. A US state department report has placed India on its second worst category of human trafficking watch list for the fifth year in a row, for allegedly failing to show evidence of increasing efforts to combat the problem. In the report, India is described as a “source, destination and transit country for men, women and children trafficked for the purpose of forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation. Ignorance, limited resources and poor execution of the protective programmes and policies for children further creates many problems and the problem of trafficking seems to be finding no redress in the near future. It is in this backdrop the present paper attempts to suggest some possible suggestion to check the problem of social menace i.e. child trafficking.