Lives At Stake

The first step towards stopping human trafficking is for people to acknowledge the issue

- Hasina Kharbhih

In the last three decades of dealing with human trafficking, I have realized that the problem of scores of youths and children getting trafficked across the border is society’s negligence to acknowledge it. Once we accept that there is rampant human trafficking from and to the Northeast, we’ll be able to decipher the cause that leads to it. The North-Eastern part of India has an acute shortage of employment opportunities for its rural populace. Due to this, many village children and youths are forced to seek employment that later proves hazardous to them.

Child Trafficking

When Impulse NGO Network (INGON) first began working in the villages of Meghalaya, we discovered that a massive percentage of the rural children had gone missing. Deeper research revealed that due to lack of income sources, villagers would send their children to do odd jobs like serving tea at tea stalls or run similar errands at token shops. Traffickers were taking this opportunity to lure these children with promises of well-paid jobs and cross them over to other states, districts or countries with considerable ease.

Since India’s Northeast shares international borders (which are open and unmanned) with countries like China, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal and Bhutan, it invariably becomes a Source, Transit and a Destination Point. These points provide an easy passage in and out of India for organized human trafficking syndicates to operate undetected.

Rat-Hole Miners