The Indian government is currently considering new legislation designed to target human trafficking. In support of this legislation, which passed the lower house in July, trafficking victims have been writing to the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, to help ensure that the bill passes the upper house during the current session. No one denies the stories of pain and suffering of these survivors of human trafficking. Unfortunately, the bill in its current form will push back their struggle for justice.
Many governments have recently passed laws targeting human trafficking. In 2016, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that 158 governments had introduced laws criminalizing most forms of trafficking in persons. This was a remarkable jump – 125 new laws in little more than a decade – from only 33 governments in the same position in 2003. This global trend suggests that governments are now taking human trafficking very seriously.
Much as we would like to report otherwise, we cannot take this trend at face value. Numerous governments have passed laws in an effort to demonstrate that human trafficking is a problem which they are keen to address, but the specific provisions found in these new laws have often proved to be ineffective or counterproductive. Not all laws against human trafficking are good laws. The devil is in the details.
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