Menneskehandel i Indien: patriarkalsk kultur og kvinders rettigheder

For Indian Girls, ‘Every Case of Trafficking Is a Failed Revolution’

Every year thousands of women and girls are trafficked through India. The patriarchal culture denying women the right to make decisions regarding their lives is to blame.

By Katarzyna Rybarczyk

September 20, 2022

A woman sitting on the street side.

Credit: Katarzyna Rybarczyk

Human trafficking, an issue affecting mainly women and girls, is deeply rooted in India. Although it is difficult to measure the exact scale of the issue due to its hidden and illegal nature, thousands of women and girls are trafficked through the country every year, according to government statistics.

There are many forms of human trafficking, but the trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation and marriage are the prevalent ones. Trafficked women are sold to men who then use them as sex objects and domestic workers.

“Almost every area in India is dealing with the problem of trafficking of women,” Shafiqur Rahman Khan, a founder of Empower People, a Delhi-based NGO working with trafficking survivors told me. “We used to have a project where we were tracking 85 villages in northern India. We found that every village had around 200 houses and each of these villages hosted at least 50 trafficked women. This means that almost 30 percent of all the households had trafficked wives.”