Operation Red Alert aims to end sex trafficking
in India by 2025. Photo courtesy of My Choices Foundation
Sex traffickers target poor communities in
India. This group aims to stop them
By Larisa Epatko, PBS NewsHour
“Economic freedom doesn’t actually mean that
much if you’re in a highly abusive situation,” said Elca Grobler, who
originally planned to use her background in finance and investment banking to
train Indian women in financial literacy and development.
Instead Grobler started My Choices Foundation
soon after moving with her family from Australia to India in 2011. The
organization has since grown to 24 staff members with two main objectives:
preventing sex trafficking and domestic violence in India.
In the South Asian country of 1.3 billion
people, there is an innate power imbalance between men and women, said Grobler.
Women grow up as a commodity of the family, then they get married and become a
commodity of their husband’s family, she said. “It’s something that’s inherent
in a patriarchal culture. Women are not viewed as who they are but what they
are.”
A ranking of women’s well-being per country —
based on their inclusion, justice and security — by the Georgetown Institute
for Women, Peace and Security and the Peace Research Institute of Oslo puts
India at No. 131 among 152 countries.
Grobler said India lacks governmental resources
and infrastructure to address domestic abuse, and women often feel too ashamed
to seek help. When they finally do reach out, it is after years of abuse and
they are at their wits’ end.
One night a woman called on the helpline,
begging Kranthi Ahron, a My Choices Foundation team member, to take care of her
children because she wanted to end her life. Ahron remembers the case from when
she first started as a counsellor with Operation PeaceMaker, the group’s
initiative to end violence against women and girls at home.
The woman was married to an alcoholic, who was
abusive and didn’t let her work as a fruit-seller for days at a time when he
suspected her of being unfaithful. “She suffered emotionally — and
economically,” Ahron said.
After speaking with her for an hour, Ahron told
her to wait until the morning before doing anything drastic, so she could meet
the woman’s children. The next day, she saw the woman, who told her, “I’m alive
and I’m taking good care of my kids.”
Her turnaround surprised them both. “I gave
some time to her, and helped her know someone cared,” Ahron said.
Operation PeaceMaker offers free counselling to
survivors of abuse and their families, and provides legal advice if the
survivors want to take any formal action. The counsellors are local women
trained to work within their own communities. They also run workshops to
educate whole communities on how they can support each other in preventing
abuse.
Ahron is now a state coordinator in southern
India for Operation Red Alert, the organization’s other main initiative to
prevent sex trafficking by teaching families how they can keep their daughters
safe.
The Global Slavery Index for 2016 says more
than 18 million people in India live in slavery, such as forced labor or
marriage, although it does not specify how many women and girls are coerced
into the sex trade in particular. Worldwide, the tally of modern-day slaves is
about 40 million, according to the index, which means nearly half are in India.
Sex traffickers target poor communities,
because they can lure girls into their service by offering to pay families’
debts, finding the girls jobs and making other promises. Australian analytics
firm Quantium developed an algorithm to help the group identify at-risk
communities based on factors such as poverty level, distance to police stations
and transportation systems, education and literacy.
The behavioral researchers at Final Mile in
Mumbai helped Grobler and her team devise the best way to approach fathers
about trafficking, and it was to appeal to their sense of protectiveness in a
positive way. Fathers often are the key decision-makers in families and sex
traffickers approach them the most.
Through the program, fathers learn that
investing in their daughters’ future by educating them will benefit the family
and the community more than an early marriage or sending them away to work. “We
speak to the good in the fathers,” and empower them with what to look for to
protect their daughters from traffickers, Grobler said.
The local implementing partners spend three
days in each village, show films about trafficking, organize school programs,
and meet with parents, children, village leaders and police. They continue to
monitor the community after the formal program by keeping in contact with
assigned residents. Once traffickers know someone is monitoring the village, it
may dissuade them from trying anything, Ahron said.
She recalled one visit to a village, where
someone told her, “A girl is missing; if only you had come earlier.”
It “pierced my heart,” she said, but it also
spurred her to want to do more.
View more stories about people working to make
a difference in our Agents for Change series.
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