Despite progress made by South Asian countries to strengthen their capacity to manage migration more efficiently and effectively and to counter trafficking in human beings (THB) and smuggling of migrants (SOM), significant challenges remain. As elsewhere, weaknesses in victim identification, case management and data collection persist in South Asia. Low detection levels, investigations and prosecutions mean that migrant smuggling and trafficking in human beings remain low-risk-high-profit activities with a culture of impunity. Investigations and prosecutions are frequently hampered by a lack of capacity, with criminal justice practitioners requiring the skills to debrief and interview trafficking victims and smuggled migrants effectively. While basic legislation on trafficking in human beings is in place across the region, SOM law is lacking entirely in most of these countries and the policy frameworks are often uncoordinated and incomplete. A lack of engagement in effective and practical international and bilateral cooperation, including in the context of migration, also negatively impacts the ability to collect evidence for investigations and criminal prosecutions. At the same time, newer challenges require new learning, such as how best to tackle the role of cyber-based recruitment for THB and SOM, how to collect electronic evidence across borders and how to trace informal and mobile illicit financial flows stemming from these crimes.
To different extents, the partner countries in South Asia – Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka – are source, transit, and destination countries for trafficking in human beings for the purpose of forced labour, sexual exploitation, forced marriage, organ removal, and forced criminal activities. Despite the overall increase in counter trafficking and migrant smuggling efforts, impunity for perpetrators remains high. Countries in South Asia convict fewer perpetrators of trafficking in proportion to their populations than most other regions, although they detect victims at a comparable rate with the rest of the world. Furthermore, almost all victims detected in South Asia in 2020 were victims of domestic trafficking – which indicates that more capacity is needed in the region to ensure identification and protection of foreign victims.
Countering trafficking in persons is relevant for the achievement of all the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly under target 16.2. However, it remains an under-researched and under-reported crime and there is a lack of accurate official data in South Asia. Therefore, statistics on the nature, extent, and potential measurement of this crime in the region is necessary to raise awareness of the size and gravity of the phenomenon, help governments, international organizations and non-governmental organizations to collect the relevant data for measuring it in a systematized way, as well as develop evidence-based policies to fight it
The proposed Action considers numerous aspects of migration, mobility and forced displacement, and focuses on countering migrant smuggling and trafficking in human beings (including children) in this context. It will do so by practically and effectively targeting associated criminal justice challenges in South Asian countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) while examining cross-cutting regional challenges in India that hinder efforts to better counter both crimes. Protection and prevention approaches are also mainstreamed throughout.
This project is funded by the European Union.
