“Do you know, when the rivers erode large chunks of land and make the banks near the border inaccessible to all the locals, miscreants use that area to traffic young girls in secret. I have seen with my own eyes,” says Tania, a survivor leader from Bijoyini, a collective of survivors of human trafficking in West Bengal.
“Every time, there is a calamity, the villagers suffer huge losses due to loss of crops and money. Their daughters are the first ones to drop out of school, get married or to go away to big cities in search of livelihood. These women are at a higher risk of child marriage and trafficking, because they are very vulnerable without any support system,” adds the 24-year-old trafficking survivor who is from a border village in North 24 Parganas district, a riverine and flood-prone region that encompasses the Indian side of the Sundarbans forests.
Bithi, another Bijoyini member from the same region, concurs, and says, “During the floods, each locality is cut off from the neighbouring regions due to the dangerous water currents. There is no electricity. Taking advantage of this situation, local miscreants not only traffic girls, they also harass, molest and rape the girls who stay behind, knowing there is no support available to them.”
Tania and Bithi along with their peers from other survivor leaders’ collectives such as Utthan and BandhanMukti, are working in collaboration with their mentoring NGOs in North- and South-24 Parganas districts of West Bengal to prevent human trafficking in the area and develop the leadership and voices of survivors in the anti-human trafficking ecosystem.
The women in these collectives, having had the lived experiences, are clear that trafficking does not take place in a vacuum, but factors such as poverty, lack of livelihood and most importantly, disasters and climate-induced change, also increase vulnerability.
Local anti-trafficking activists opine that a huge number of cases also go unreported due to gaps in the criminal justice system, reportage of trafficking cases as ‘missing girls’ cases, fear of stigmatisation and terrorisation by the ecosystem of traffickers.
The districts of North-24 Parganas and South-24 Parganas, which are home to 20 per cent of West Bengal’s population but account for 32 per cent of trafficking cases, are prone to cyclonic storms. The frequency of storms has increased in the recent years, which climate experts believe could be because of rapid climate change. The region, which was ravaged in 2009 by cyclone Aila, witnessed four devastating cyclones in the past four years. The impact of these cyclonic storms on the lives of the community has been immense, with thousands losing their homes, crops and livelihoods, and women and girls being made further vulnerable to trafficking and other forms of sexual violence.
The claims of survivor leaders about the domino effect of the climate crisis on trafficking are not isolated cases but have been echoed by climate experts and gender rights activists around the world.
Fran Witt, a climate change and modern slavery adviser at Anti-Slavery International, writes that severe climate changes cause environmental destruction, which then forces people to migrate and leaves them vulnerable to trafficking, sexual exploitation or debt bondage. The stories told are very similar across continents and countries. The crisis is so apocalyptic, that it cannot be ignored anymore.
The UN has mapped 17 Sustainable Development Goals, of which goal 13 talks about climate action. However, women from the survivors’ collectives echo the idea that working on climate action cannot be carried out without working on gender equality (goal 5).
“It is not only about men or women,” says Tania. “The more frequently occurring calamities are affecting both genders. It is impossible to work for the betterment of our communities without the involvement of one gender. It is also affecting our health and our livelihood, as in these regions, we are extremely dependent on nature to earn a living,” she narrates.
“We cannot ensure gender equality without ensuring our community’s safety from calamities,” adds Bithi.
Looking at the complexities, the leaders from these survivors' collectives have stepped up and forged different individual and group action plans to meet the needs of their own communities.
Bijoyini leaders are leading a campaign to plant trees along the river banks to prevent soil erosion with the help of local government bodies such as panchayats and block offices. They are undertaking awareness drives in their communities to ensure people know about environmental issues, reasons behind increasing pollution levels and the adverse impact of using plastics. They are distributing free seedlings and also encouraging community members to adopt alternative forms of livelihood such as organic farming.
Firoja, a leader from the Utthan, shares that they had collaborated with local government and private stakeholders to distribute saplings of fruit-bearing trees to local households to prevent air pollution, along with generating income for them, thus contributing to reducing poverty in the region.
In Sandeshkhali block of North-24 Parganas, Bijoyini leaders are working as a surveillance system for the government in the region to ensure that strong embankments and dams are built to prevent floods, and damaged embankments are repaired immediately. On the other hand, BandhanMukti leaders, most of whom are from South-24 Parganas district, have received several trainings on ways to combat climate change and become first responders to disasters from their mentoring NGO and have paved the way to spread that information to the larger community. In 2018, these leaders advocated for the plantation of mangroves with the administration and were successful in planting a long stretch of mangrove trees in the region.
While these collectives are initiating and spearheading group actions to combat climate change, several of these women have also initiated individual actions during times of disaster for their community. When warnings of cyclone Amphan were sounded, Rokeya from BandhanMukti hired an autorickshaw and went around the locality with a mic to alert villagers and encouraged them to move to higher ground. Her colleague, Rahima, raised this issue in the media, while other members are sensitising the community members about ways of protecting their livelihood during floods, such as by making hanging gardens.
While the women from these collectives are spearheading grassroots-level action in their communities to prevent further disasters and protect the most vulnerable, it is high time that the apathy of the state is challenged. The state can no longer turn a blind eye to this growing crisis, which is impacting several lives and pushing girls and women from vulnerable communities into modern slavery.
“We cannot run away from this place, which is our home. The Sundarbans have always been prone to cyclonic storms. But now we have to learn how to prevent the increase in these conditions and also how to live unitedly as one with nature,” another leader from BandhanMukti shares, adding, “We are doing what we can, but is everyone doing what they can?”
While the world observes International Women’s Day on Tuesday, it is important that we celebrate these grassroots-level leaders who are trying their best to bring in positive changes in their own communities.
Anwesha and Srabastee are social workers and gender rights activists associated with the Leadership Next programme that is aimed at leadership development and empowerment of survivors of human trafficking.
