The State of Jharkhand, carved out from Bihar in the year 2000, having a population of 3.2 crore, of which a sizable population is tribal dominated (over 26%). The study focuses on Jharkhand, a state vulnerable for trafficking of children for labour, child marriage and sexual abuse of girls. Despite the high prevalence of the crime, the reporting and prosecution rates in the state is abysmally low. News reports and researches state that thousands of girls have gone missing from Jharkhand’s tribal districts, however, the state has no record. The “Trafficking in Persons Report, June 2021”, reiterates this fact as “In recent years, West Bengal, Jharkhand, and Assam state authorities allegedly ordered police to register trafficking cases as kidnapping or missing persons to reduce the number of trafficking cases in official statistics”. The major problems/intersecting forms of violence faced by these girls are lack of education opportunities (female literacy rate being 56% as compared to 67% male literacy rate), low income and literacy level, displacement and migration, limited source of employment due to high dependence on depleting natural resources as means of earning, social evils like child marriage and LWE.
The major challenges faced by any organization or individual are the fear of repercussion, lack of support from the law enforcement agencies and lack of awareness in the communities. The best strategies to curb the issue are regular awareness programmes, strengthening the village level child protection committees, accountability of each child in the panchayat, identification of vulnerable children in the village and most importantly education. In order to effectively combat human trafficking, we must address this lack of awareness and shared understanding of what constitutes human trafficking, as well as attitudes that may keep people from identifying and helping victims of human trafficking.
