Partway into a march across India to raise awareness about bride trafficking, the crew got good news. They’d given a presentation to officers at a train station on how to identify trafficking victims, and the following day the officers rescued a girl, Sabrang India reports.
It was one of many successes of the March Against Bride Trafficking 2018, an initiative by Shafiqur Rahman Khan, the founder of Empower People and an Everywoman Working Group member. The march’s goal was to explore ways government offices, NGOs, youth groups and other stakeholders can work together to prevent bride trafficking, a collaboration Khan says is crucial for combating this rising problem.
Thousands of girls and women in India have been purchased or sold into lives of domestic or sexual slavery, and many of them are kidnapped or purchased across northern Indian states, from Assam to Himachal Pradesh, a route responsible for more than 60 percent of India’s human trafficking, including cross-border trafficking with Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh.
Khan traveled the route alongside other antitrafficking activists, legal experts, psychologists and grassroots organizers. Along the way, the crew went to schools to speak with young girls, one of the most vulnerable groups to trafficking. It also held oath-taking ceremonies with the slogan “Let the girl be girl, not a bride,” and training programs with social workers in rural areas. The group also established antitrafficking civic groups across districts to assist trafficking survivors.
The march initially set out to cover 8,000 kilometers, but the group extended the route in order to meet survivors and their families in rural and forested areas. By traveling 14,000 kilometers in total, the march helped officials aid 127 trafficking survivors and identified more than 1,000 previously undocumented cases of trafficking. It also helped 13 survivors living in shelters find their families.
Khan and his staff are working on a detailed report with recommendations that will be submitted to government agencies in order to help improve India’s child-protection program. Empower People, which is dedicated to preventing bride trafficking, is now planning a similar march from the northern city of Jammu to the southern state of Kerala with the goal of creating a support network for trafficking survivors across the country.
