Interactive Thematic Dialogue on Taking Collective Action to end Human Trafficking

Good afternoon. My name is Ruchira Gupta and I bring greetings from the victims and survivors of sex trafficking who are members of my organization, Apne Aap Women Worldwide in four states of India. We appreciate the attention that the General Assembly and the UNODC has devoted to the issue of human trafficking and the fact that we have been invited the second year in a row to contribute to the General Assembly’s debate. We welcome the efforts to develop a global plan of action which will concretise the UN Protocol. We want the plan of action that does not dilute, modify or change the protocol but is an implementation plan.
 

We had asked for a coordinated effort to confront the demand for human trafficking so that law-enforcement agencies individually, and in collaboration bi-laterally and multilaterally investigate, arrest and prosecute traffickers and those who buy trafficked people. We are pleased to note that the Secretary General’s background paper has given importance to criminalizing trafficking in persons and discouraging demand.  I appeal to all member countries, including my own country, India, to strengthen their anti-trafficking laws to confront the demand for human trafficking in keeping with the UN protocol.
 

Demand for trafficked people –from end-users to those who make a profit of the trade has become the most immediate cause for the expansion of the trafficking industry. To tackle demand effectively we have to address the business which profits from it as much as the buyers of trafficked people who drive the demand. According to a study by the National Human Rights Commission of India, most traffickers for prostitution stated that they supply women and girls on demand which includes the demand for teenage girls, voluptuous girls, fair-skinned girls-whatever the buyer wants.
 

These buyers need to be confronted and put through the criminal justice system as much as the traffickers who run the supply chains.  Today, I am speaking on behalf of these victims and survivors of human trafficking who want no ambiguities in laws and international instruments on criminalizing trafficking and addressing the demand. They want both justice and accountability and they want those responsible for trafficking to be punished and stopped. They want interventions to focus on the responsibility of those who buy trafficked people such as buyers of prostituted sex and those “entrepreneurs” (traffickers, procurers, pimps, brothel owners, and managers, owners of plantations and factories and money lenders) who make a profit off trading in women and girls, boys and men.
 

As nineteen-year old Naina, prostituted when she was thirteen in Bihar says: “As long as there are buyers, there will be traffickers. We must punish those who buy us. Their punishment will protect us from new buyers who will fear punishment too.”
 

An increase in convictions against traffickers and buyers will serve to make this trade untenable. Countries have to strengthen their law-enforcement response to trafficking and work across borders to tackle the organized nature of the crime by:
Bringing traffickers to book,
Confiscating the illegal assets created out of trafficking,
Making the traffickers and buyers compensate for the damages and penalizing them.
All act as a deterrent to traffickers and buyers and restores a sense of justice to the survivor.
Our survivors believe that if the number of convictions goes up, the costs of operations of human trafficking will become untenable and the business models of traffickers will be disrupted and individuals who create the demand will be embarrassed by being identified.
 

Slavery was once perpetuated by the idea that there was and always would be slavery and now sex-slavery and prostitution are also perpetuated by the same idea of inevitability. This has led to public health Foundation funds being spent solely on the supposed protection of sex buyers from AIDS and not at all on the protection of women and children from sex buyers. This creates a vested interest in preserving brothels in some parts of the world as well as unintended consequences of the emphasis on condoms alone has simply raised the price of sex without condoms. We ask for coordination efforts between sectors and agencies that take into account the endangering impact of harm reduction models that are not framed in harm eradication goals.
 

The women and children of Apne Aap are asking us not to accept their slavery as inevitable, and as in Colonial times, not to only protect the buyer from disease but ask for more dignified livelihood options. They want a world in which it is unacceptable to buy or sell another human being and to imagine an economy in which one does not force one to sell oneself. They want us to work in a coordinated way to ensure their economic and social rights as much as their civil and political rights to ensure their right to food, housing, education and livelihood to pave the way for their right not to be trafficked. I appeal to member states to let me bring a panel of survivors as part of their efforts to develop a global response to trafficking.