Dear Bikash,
I would like to know in greater detail about your community vigilant groups. Where are they based and what is the exact process of mentoring them? Also where are you based and what is your email address? Finally just two comments on an excellent idea-your focus is on parents who let their children go, how about also addressing those who recruit, seduce, trick, force and coerce these parents and their children? Can your community vigilant groups not address the Demand which creates trafficking? If those who are demanding traffficked people are punished and prosecuted with the cooperation of community vigilant groups who will file complaints and appear as witnesses against traffickers, that would make a dent in the industry.
Thank you,
----------
Ruchira Gupta,
Founder President,
Apne Aap Women Worldwide,
D-56 Anand Niketan, New Delhi-21
ruchiragupta@gmail.com
www.apneaap.org
Kolkata University,
Kolkata, India
The CLAP is based in Orissa. It has several units with head quarter at Cuttack. The work cited here is being field tested in Badamba Block of Cuttack district, a rural pocket inhabited mostly by Dalit and Tribal people. The programme started under a project Right Path to Education which was the first field level experimentation of securing for children Education as a Fundamental Right, after incorporation of Article 21-A in the Indian Constitution. The programme was supported by Winrock International in 2004 for a period of 2-years. The Winrock International has brought out a very interesting advocacy material on our work which is available in their website under the chapter - Advocacy.
As you can see in my submission the effort in Badamba to prevent trafficking for any purpose is an attempt of preventive legal action. Here we are offering a social solution by an innovative intervention by teaching the community with simple tips of law which can help them to prevent any future legal complications. Like in case of marriage with an outsider who is not known much in the community the contracting party ask for marriage registration as a precondition. Similarly, the middleman who claim to be contractors for labour are required to show their licence with contractual document under different labour laws. In case of children a birth certificate is being provided to every child in the Block to establish their age so that no person in their childhood which is prohibited under law is allowed to enter into contract with labour contractor. These simple legal tools are taken to the community by Barefoot Lawyers in each community who are mostly volunteers. A group of lawyer monitors and offers legal support when it is required.
We are primarily a legal support group but realised that preventive legal action can save poor communities from being exploited. The perpetrators must be punished but historically it hardly happened.
Dear Bikash,
I would like to know in greater detail about your community vigilant groups. Where are they based and what is the exact process of mentoring them? Also where are you based and what is your email address? Finally just two comments on an excellent idea-your focus is on parents who let their children go, how about also addressing those who recruit, seduce, trick, force and coerce these parents and their children? Can your community vigilant groups not address the Demand which creates trafficking? If those who are demanding traffficked people are punished and prosecuted with the cooperation of community vigilant groups who will file complaints and appear as witnesses against traffickers, that would make a dent in the industry.
Thank you,
----------
Ruchira Gupta,
Founder President,
Apne Aap Women Worldwide,
D-56 Anand Niketan, New Delhi-21
ruchiragupta@gmail.com
www.apneaap.org
Kolkata University,
Kolkata, India
Dear Ruchira Gupta,
The CLAP is based in Orissa. It has several units with head quarter at Cuttack. The work cited here is being field tested in Badamba Block of Cuttack district, a rural pocket inhabited mostly by Dalit and Tribal people. The programme started under a project Right Path to Education which was the first field level experimentation of securing for children Education as a Fundamental Right, after incorporation of Article 21-A in the Indian Constitution. The programme was supported by Winrock International in 2004 for a period of 2-years. The Winrock International has brought out a very interesting advocacy material on our work which is available in their website under the chapter - Advocacy.
As you can see in my submission the effort in Badamba to prevent trafficking for any purpose is an attempt of preventive legal action. Here we are offering a social solution by an innovative intervention by teaching the community with simple tips of law which can help them to prevent any future legal complications. Like in case of marriage with an outsider who is not known much in the community the contracting party ask for marriage registration as a precondition. Similarly, the middleman who claim to be contractors for labour are required to show their licence with contractual document under different labour laws. In case of children a birth certificate is being provided to every child in the Block to establish their age so that no person in their childhood which is prohibited under law is allowed to enter into contract with labour contractor. These simple legal tools are taken to the community by Barefoot Lawyers in each community who are mostly volunteers. A group of lawyer monitors and offers legal support when it is required.
We are primarily a legal support group but realised that preventive legal action can save poor communities from being exploited. The perpetrators must be punished but historically it hardly happened.
Thanks a lot,
Bikash Das