To combat trafficking of women and children

In a bid to abolish the rising women and children trafficking, the government is planning to launch a comprehensive scheme under the 11th Five Year Plan by integrating three ongoing pilot projects covering combat trafficking, rescue operation, restoring the image of the victims and their rehabilitation and reintegration in their family, Ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD) on Wednesday informed in a released statement.

The WCD Ministry informed that the government was receiving increasing number of reports regarding cross-border human trafficking especially of women and children in last few years. This further made the need to introduce three pilot projects under ‘Ujjawala’, a centrally sponsored scheme with the help of non-government organisations last year.

The objectives of the scheme are underlined as: Prevention through community vigilance, awareness and sensitisation of functionaries like police; Rescue- safe withdrawal of the victim from the place of exploitation; Rehabilitation- safe shelter for victims with basic livelihood needs; Reintegration- restoring the victim into the family/community (if victim desires); and Repatriation, to provide support to cross-border victims for their safe repatriation to their country of origin.

It was observed that repatriation of cross-border victims to their country of origin was a major challenge, and currently there were no efficient procedures that could efficiently confront the situation and repatriate the victims quickly.

On the received feedback of Ujjawala scheme, the Centre is planning to implement some pro-active measures during the ongoing five year plan as a long term operation to scrap human trafficking, official informed.

Before implanting the new scheme, WCD has conducted several case studies in collaboration with UNICEF and NGOs to understand the challenges in broad ways.