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Uttarakhand disaster: Now, all eyes on unclaimed kids
Post-disaster is when most child traffickers strike, warns rights panel.
Updated : Nov 21, 2013, 01:44 PM IST
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People in Uttarakhand have begun to pick up the pieces of their lives. But who is looking after the stranded children?
Several child rights groups well-versed with post-disaster relief work have now put the spotlight on the possibility of the trafficking of the large number of children left ‘vulnerable’ by the devastation caused by the floods. They claim that this is the time when child traffickers swarm relief and rehabilitation camps posing as relief workers.
Pre-empting such a racket, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights plans to soon send to the state a team that will prepare a report on this vulnerable population and help the government in its efforts to rehabilitate them, says chairperson Kushal Singh. It has sent an advisory to the state government asking it to take steps to safeguard unclaimed, unattended and vulnerable children. It has asked the state to question people not related to the kids they’re accompanying.
The paranoia is not unfounded.
Relief camps, explain activists, have been the source points of trafficking in the past. Cases in point: the tsunami in 2004, the Kosi floods in 2008 and the cyclone that hit the Sunderbans a year later. “Children at relief camps end up in vicious networks of prostitution, begging and organ transplant,” says Kailash Satyarthi, founder of NGO Bachpan Bachao.
Uttarakhand has three small children’s homes and eight observation homes to lodge juvenile delinquents, but no shelters. “The infrastructure won’t be able to cope with the large population of vulnerable children,” warns Satyarthi. Although there is no official data on the number of affected children, activists claim that besides kids of locals and pilgrims, there is a large number of minors who worked at local eateries but weren’t registered.
Sanjay Gupta, director of NGO Chetna, is worried about the class divide in relief camps. He claims that street children and ragpickers are discriminated against, thus making them an easy prey to traffickers at such camps.
