Poster campaign in India unmasks human trafficking
By Kristine Greenaway, Programme Manager, WACC Congress 2008
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- The minister had never heard the term “human trafficking” but he knew something was happening in his community on the border with Nepal in northeast India.“On Fridays, Nepali girls are coming to the bazaar then we never see them again,” he told Pradipta Singh, an official with the Church of North India.It was then the minister learned that those young women are being “trafficked” into the sex trade or into slave labour in New Delhi, Mumbai and other Indian cities.
To his distress, the minister also learned that the phenomenon of trafficking human beings not only affects neighbouring Nepal but that young women in his own community were at risk. The region’s failing tea plantation economy means many families are desparate for new sources of revenue.This leaves them vulnerable to the false claims of traffickers who convince them that, for a fee, they can get jobs for their daughters in restaurants or as house maids in the city.Instead, the young women end up in brothels or in abusive domestic service with no way to escape.
Singh, who is responsible for CNI’s programme to prevent exploitation of women and children, urged the minister to talk about the threat of human traffickingduring the Sunday service and gave him posters created by the CNI to raise awareness of the presence of traffickers in the community.Prompted by that information campaign, people from the congregation and the wider community came forward to say their daughters had disappeared after being offered work in the city. Eleven of the missing girls have since been found in brothels and the CNI is raising funds for their rescue and rehabilitation in a safe haven.
Recently, five of those information posters were on display in Vienna at a United Nations conference on the problem of human trafficking.They were used to draw attention to the Anti Trafficking Programme, a ground-breaking initiative launched by the CNI in collaboration with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), which aims at protecting women and children from modern-day slavery.The posters focus on awareness-raising in communities that are at risk of exploitation by traffickers.
The Church of North India, as a corporate member of WACC , recognizes the role communicators can play in addressing the causes and consequences of poverty.By equipping communities to make visible a hidden threat to women and children, the CNI allows people to protect those among them who are most vulnerable to the threat.
The acting Executive Director of UNIFEM, Joanne Sandler, is a keynote speaker for WACC’s Congress 2008 scheduled for Cape Town, South Africa, in October of this year on the theme Communication is peace: Building viable communities.
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