Africa

Nina has found peace after being rescued from human traffickers and pimps in Goa, India. Credit: Mehru Jaffer/IPS

By Mehru Jaffer
Goa, India, Jan 3 2022 (IPS)

For over two decades, Nina tossed around like a leaf in a storm. While a teenager, she was lured into the sex trade, and pimps kept a huge chunk of the money that she earned as a sex slave. Nina was often bruised. Once, she refused sex with a man who did not want to use a condom. He beat her so severely that she had found it difficult to breathe.

One day the police raided the premises where Nina and other girls were kept as prisoners and arrested the pimps. The girls were taken to a protective home run by the local government. She like many other trafficked women abused alcohol and smoked to drown her sorrows.

Nina is now in her thirties and cured of her addictions. Her life is comfortable compared with her twenties when she was forced to live in the company of traffickers and pimps.

Lisa Pires of the Presentation Sisters Order told IPS that she had first met Nina in 2019. However, Pires declined to share Nina’s name and whereabouts. Today both government officials and social activists jealously guard the identity of all trafficking survivors who struggle to lead normal lives.

The survivors need help to deal with post-rescue trauma, and the experience they go through during identification interviews and legal proceedings is painful. Some face re-victimisation and are punished for crimes traffickers force them to commit. Others are stigmatised and don’t have a support system.

“We are happy to share stories of victims without revealing their exact identity as society needs to listen and to learn from those who have survived trafficking,” adds Amala Kulandaisamy, 40, social activist and administrative head at the Nagoa centre.

The Presentation Sisters have been working in Goa since 1967.

Amala Kulandaisamy and Lisa Pires from the Nagoa Centre for the rehabilitation of trafficked persons in Goa. The centre is run by the Order of the Presentation Sisters. Credit: Mehru Jaffer/IPS

The Nagoa Centre opened in 2001 in the ancestral home of Pires. Her parents gifted the 110-year-old house to the Order of the Presentation Sisters.

Pires joined the order in 1958 and shares her concerns about what is happening to young women today.

Nina’s story is similar to that of countless Indian women from poverty-stricken parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP) trafficked to Goa for commercial sexual exploitation, Pires says.

Surrounded by half a dozen starving siblings, a mother with mental health issues and an alcoholic father, Nina had fled her village when she was barely 15 years old. Soon after, a gang of boys picked up the vulnerable Nina. They promised her a job in Goa.

Goa is considered a significant destination in India for human trafficking and related commercial sexual work. Girls and women are trafficked to Goa from most states in India, including the countryside near Goa. They are also trafficked from Nepal, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Russia, and Thailand. While fewer women are trafficked from Nepal, the number of those sold and bought from Bangladesh increased.

The sex work is primarily concentrated in the coastal belt of North Goa, with maximum rescue operations by the police taking place around the stunningly beautiful beaches of Calangute and Arjuna. Now commercial sex work is said to be spreading from the tourist areas of the coastal belt of North Goa to the mainland and away from tourist hubs.

Throughout last year, Pires worked to reduce trafficking. The theme for 2021 was Victims’ Voices Lead the Way, with social activists spending time with human trafficking survivors counselling them. The survivors are seen as key in the fight against human trafficking. The theme focused on preventing the crime, identifying, and rescuing survivors, and supporting them on the road to rehabilitation.

Local people are encouraged to check the background of those wanting to rent accommodation and ensure that tenants are not part of any human trafficking activity.

The Presentation Sisters are diligent in their work against the trafficking of women and children and sensitive to their sexual exploitation. They provide alternative employment opportunities to survivors and constantly raise awareness against this organised crime.

A vital exercise today is to document the experience of survivors without revealing their identities.

The idea is to turn the suggestions of survivors into concrete action – a more survivor-centred approach to combat human trafficking and encourage lawmakers to pass legislation that will better protect citizens vulnerable to sexual exploitation and ensure they receive justice.

They say that there is a need for stricter regulation of massage parlours and dance bars where sexual exploitation of the vulnerable is high.

ARZ, based in Vasco, Goa that recommends women engaged in commercial sexual activities be rescued and not arrested by the police. It recommends, among other things, the speedy trial of offences under the Immoral Prevention Act and the establishment of a special court that will convict offenders – who generally get away unpunished.

ARZ is the publisher of Beautiful Women, a book about ten inspiring stories of women who survived the sex trade and some of whom are employed at Swift Wash, a laundry founded by the organisation.

Nina is fortunate. She survived the exploitation and has recently visited Potta, a well-known temple town in Kerala. Here she experienced spiritual calm and has returned to Goa to find a regular job as a caretaker in a private home.

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) http://gsngoal8.com/ is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking”.

 

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By Genevieve Donnellon-May and Mark Wang
AUSTRALIA, Jan 3 2022 (IPS)

The new Yangtze River Protection Law (YRPL), which came into effect on March 1, 2021, is China’s first legislation on a specific river basin. The Yangtze River is China’s longest and largest river system, stretching over 6,300 kilometres and has over 700 tributaries. With a drainage basin covering more than 1.8 million square kilometres, approximately one-fifth of China’s total land area, the river basin is home to over 40% of the country’s population.

Genevieve Donnellon-May

The new law suggests that the Chinese Central government is shifting its priorities when it comes to rivers and ecological conservation. The YRPL demonstrates a major milestone in the CCP’s legislation on ecological protection and restoration: it seeks to strengthen oversight as well as the prevention and control of water pollution in the river basin by addressing the inability of current institutions to carry out the river’s protection through 96 provisions across nine chapters. The overall aim of the YRPL is to protect China’s longest river by strengthening its ecological protection and restoration as well as promoting the efficient use of its water resources.

Why is the YRPL necessary?

The YRPL is necessary for four main reasons:

1) To protect China’s mother river: Both Yellow and Yangtze rivers are often referred to in Chinese as the “mother rivers”. As “cradles of Chinese civilisation” of Chinese civilization, both rivers have played significant roles in China’s history, demonstrating their cultural and historical value to China and Chinese people.

2) To safeguard China’s driving economic force: the Yangtze River holds great socio-economic value for China. Notably, the river forms an integral part of the Yangtze River Economic Belt which plays a key role to national energy and food security as well as global supply chains. Covering 21% of China’s total land area, the Yangtze River Economic Belt is made up of nine provinces (Anhui, Guizhou, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Yunnan, and Zhejiang), two municipalities (Chongqing and Shanghai), and many of China’s free trade zones. The region is believed to account for 45% of the national gross domestic product (GDP), making it one of China’s economic centre, and a major agricultural region, making the area one of the most intensive farming regions in the world and an integral part of China’s ability to safeguard food security. The area plays an important role in China’s rapid development as well as in the national green development push, agricultural green development, and various other development policies.

Mark Wang

3) To protect China’s resource basket: the Yangtze River basin is rich in mineral and water resources, and as an important national ecological asset, it is also rich in biodiversity, providing habitat to over 400 species of fish. As the main source of drinking water for over 400 million people living near the Yangtze River basin, the Yangtze River provides drinking water for more than 35% of the country’s population or more than 5% of the world’s total population. The Yangtze River also forms an integral part of China’s hydropower accounting for 73% of China’s total hydro-capacity.

In addition, the Yangtze River plays an enormous role in the South-North Water Transfer Project. The South-North Water Transfer Project diverts water from southern China to secure water supply to Beijing and other major cities in the North China Plain for drinking and non-drinking purposes. Along with the Hai River, Yellow River, and Huai River, the four rivers form the so-called ‘four horizontal and three vertical’ “sanzhong siheng” (三纵四横) water security network in China.

4) To maintain sustainable development: the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt has come at the cost of serious impact on the sustainable development of both the economy and society. Consequences include severe pollution, overfishing, and industrialisation as well as sand dredging and dam-building which harm the river’s water quality and biodiversity, as well as environmental and human health. This consequently affects more than 580 million people who live along the 2 million square-kilometre land area of the YREB.

The consequences of lax environmental standards have resulted in the main drinking water supply source of around 400 million people, or a third of China’s population, being threatened. The dangerous levels of heavy metals (e.g., arsenic and lead), linked to the development and smelting of mineral resources, and which threaten the environment and ecology as well as human health, food security, and food safety. The river’s high rates of pollution have been further linked to China’s “cancer villages” (癌症村).

Although the central Chinese government has acknowledged these concerns in reports and environmental policies (e.g., “ecological red lines” policy to balance environmental and ecological protection and economic growth) and regulations (e.g., fishing ban), they are generally subject to poor coordination, application, and enforcement. In 2016, Chinese president Xi Jinping highlighted the necessity of protecting the Yangtze River as a key long-term task through basin-wide coordination at the Yangtze River Economic Belt Development Forum, where he called for “joint effort to protect, not develop”. President Xi additionally emphasised that the economic belt’s future development should prioritise “green development” and ecology as per China’s national “ecological civilisation” (生态文明).

The YRPL offers many opportunities. Aiming to addressing water resources management and the sustainable development of the Yangtze River basin by cutting across, the YRPL can strengthen China’s “ecological civilisation” and green development policies. However, the YRPL presents many challenges. How can the Chinese central government implement and enforce the YRPL at a local level? What kind of legal infrastructure or mechanisms are necessary to create a supporting environment to ensure the law’s success? In addition, will local interests try to overpower the basin-wide protection law? Many of the factories accused of polluting the Yangtze River contribute significant amounts of money to the gross domestic products (GDPs) of provinces. Will this, combined with socio-economic disparity between provinces, influence the YRPL’s implementation and effectiveness? Nonetheless, if successful, the YRPL may lead to the universal implementation of similar protection laws for other rivers in China.

Genevieve Donnellon-May is a research assistant with the Institute of Water Policy (IWP) at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include China, Africa, transboundary governance, and the food-energy-water nexus. Genevieve’s work has been published by The Diplomat and the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum.

Mark Wang is a human geographer specializing in development and environmental issues in China. He is a professor in School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and also the director of the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Melbourne.

 

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