Running Head: TRAFFICKING AND HIV

Human Trafficking and HIV in India

Kyle Taylor
Bon Secours Memorial College of Nursing
November 7, 2013

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Abstract

Human trafficking in India is a grave concern. They are deceived into sex work by others
usually by false promises of other jobs. After they are into the sex trade, they face high rates of
violence, HIV, and substance abuse. Interventions are in place to help this population, but the
efforts are not enough. Further efforts are needed in order to combat this practice.

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Human Trafficking and HIV in India

We live in world that is constantly moving forward, bringing us new technologies and
better lives. We have more today than in any point history: longer, better, and healthier lives.
We have so much sometimes we overlook travesties that are happening elsewhere. Today there
are populations in the world that vulnerable: vulnerable to poverty, hunger or circumstances.
The worst of these are the populations are the ones that are vulnerable to us, humans. Today
there are women in the world that are being abducted and trafficked across the world. To make
this prospect even more despicable is the reason why they are being trafficked. They are torn
away from their families and their world and are then forced to sell their bodies. After they are
trafficked in order to sell their bodies, adverse health outcomes is what they face. From
substance abuse to HIV, their health is at serious risk. This is a situation that is happening
everywhere in the world today and yet it is also overlooked.
Social determinants of health affect these womens circumstances a great deal. These
determinants are the factors and conditions an individual is born into and lives in. For these
young women, social determinants have conspired to force them out of their homes and away
from safety. Poverty is the biggest social determinant of health that contributes to the trafficking
of these women. Over half off all women and girls, about 57.4%, trafficked in India were
trafficked under the pretense of false economic opportunities. For example, the trafficker told
them that they would be starting a job such as a housemaid (Gupta, Rai, Decker, Reed, &
Silverman, 2009). In order to become financially secure these young women are putting their
faith and trust into individuals who do not deserve this trust. They are lied to about economic
prospects in order to sell them to brothels. This happens because of the poverty that they live in.

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These women are trying to make a better future for themselves and others are taking advantage
of this.
Traffickers deceive them in the name of economic profit. These women are lied to,
tricked, and deceived in order for others to make money off of them. Most alarmingly, it not
total strangers who represent the biggest threat to these young women. Over half of the
trafficking agents were non-strangers to the women; most of them were acquaintances, family
members, husbands, or co-workers (Gupta et al., 2009). This alarmingly statistic shows exactly
how poverty as a social determinant is affecting these womens lives. They are tricked into sex
work by the promise of a job by others who put economic prosperity about human dignity.
Because of the social determinates that conspire to forces these women into the sex trade;
these women have health outcomes that are very dire. The biggest health outcomes for these
women are substance abuse, HIV, and violence. As Silverman et al. (2011) notes in his study,
This experience is associated with increased risk of sexual violence, frequent alcohol use, and
high levels of exposure to HIV during the first 30 days after entry. Their health outcomes after
being forced into the sex trade are very dire. These women are forced to consume alcohol to
facilitate rape and they then use it as a means to cope with the violence they are facing (Gupta et
al., 2009). Substances, especially alcohol, are used to ply these women into sex work and are
then used as a way to cope with what is happening to them. They also develop STIs like HIV
because they cannot negotiate condom use (Gupta et al., 2009). The reason for these dire health
outcomes is a lack of autonomy. After they are sold to the brothel managers, they have little to
no autonomy (Gupta et al., 2009). This lack of autonomy has severe consequences to their health
because they cannot make decisions for themselves. They are at the whims of others who do not
care about their health and well being.

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Interventions are needed to combat this foul practice. In order to successfully combat
this practice, a two-tiered approach must be implemented. The first step is to free the women
and to combat the practice of human trafficking, especially for the sex trade. The second is to
lower the rates and prevent the spread of STIs, especially HIV. The first step to combat human
trafficking is to evaluate the existing anti-trafficking initiatives (Gumpta, Reed, Kershaw, &
Blankenship, 2011). High rates of human trafficking still exist, so governments and NGOs need
to evaluate the initiatives in place to combat this practice. The next step is to use police
operations in conjunction with NGOs to arrest the traffickers and free the women (Gupta et al.,
2009). By arresting the people responsible for human trafficking and making it harder to do this
practice, this population can become safer. The next step is to make a female sex worker selfregulatory board to monitor sex trafficking cases (Gupta et al., 2009). This would serve as an
overlap to police interventions and help to make this population safer by catching the cases the
police and NGOs miss. The interventions used now, especially police operations are not enough
and more interventions are needed.
The second intervention needed is to help prevent the spread of HIV to these women.
The conventional approaches to stemming the spread of HIV in these women are not working.
Peer education and female sex worker collectivism are the dominant approaches for HIV
prevention for this female sex workers (Silverman et al., 2011). Because of the unique nature of
this trafficking victims, these approaches have not worked. The lack of autonomy and the nature
of the crimes committed against these women make a moot point for conventional wisdom of
HIV prevention. New programs and interventions must be implemented in order to successfully
combat the spread of HIV in this population. Programs need to consider the differences among
female sex workers on the basis of mod of entry (Gupta et al., 2011). Because of the lack of

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autonomy and choice, the interventions for this population need to be different than the
interventions for female sex workers. The greatest way to successfully combat rising rates of
HIV in these women is to address the high prevalence of violence by developing resources to aid
victims and to change perpetrator behaviors (Gupta et al., 2011). In other words, the greatest
way to combat HIV in this population is to combat the reasons they are in this situation to begin
with.
The Millennium Development Goals provides a set of goals that will promote health
equality. The two goals that directly affect this population are to eradicate extreme poverty and
to combat HIV. The way most of these women are trafficked into sex work is because of
poverty. They are promised other jobs and do not know what they are entering into. By
eradicating poverty, a big weapon that perpetrators use to traffic these women will disappear.
Combating HIV is also very important to for this population. Women that have been coerced
into sex work have a high probability of contacting HIV. By implementing programs to reduce
the rates of HIV, this population can be safer.
There are global approaches right now to combat these problems. Because of the unique
nature of these cases, however, these efforts have not been all that successful. The biggest way
that efforts are being used is to prevent sex trafficking from happening and to release the women
who have been trafficked. The majority of these efforts are being conducted by anti trafficking
NGOs in partnership with police operations (Gupta et al., 2009). The second strategy being used
is to stop the spread of HIV to these women. This strategy is used in conjunction with the first
strategy. Peer education and female sex worker collectivism are the dominant strategies being
used to stop HIV (Silverman et al., 2011). Because of the lack of autonomy these women have,
however, these methods are not effective.

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It is very important to eliminate these barriers to health. Poverty, one of the biggest
reasons for these crimes, is a potent indicator of health. The poorer a person is, the less healthy
they will be. The next barrier to health is the act of trafficking itself. It is a heinous crime being
perpetrated on this population. After being trafficked and sold, their lives are full of a lack of
autonomy and violence. They are not afforded a chance to make decisions about their lives or
their health. Eliminating this barrier to health would lead to a substantial rise in health for this
population. The final barrier to health is the pandemic that is HIV. It is important to control the
proliferation of this disease because of its negative impact on health. By reducing the rates of
this disease, health outcomes will substantially increase.
The trafficking of young women in India is a grave concern globally. Trafficked women
in sex work have a substantially lowered standard of living. Not only is their choice being ripped
from them, they face grave concerns to their health. Not only are they more likely to abuse
substances; violence, both sexual and nonsexual, is inflicted on them on an alarming rate.
Finally they have an increased chance to get HIV. Because of their lack of autonomy, they do
not get a choice for primary prevention or secondary prevention. This practice strips the dignity
and choice of this population away, and leaves them open to negative health outcomes.

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References:

Gupta, J., Rai, A., Decker, M. R., Reed, E., & Silverman, J. G. (2009) HIV Vulnerabilities of
Sex-Trafficked Indian Women and Girls. International Journal of Gynecology and
Obstetrics, 107(1), 30-34. doi: 10.1016/i.iigo.2009.06.009
Gupta, J., Reed, E., Kershaw, T., & Blankenship, K.M. (2011). History of Sex Trafficking,
Recent experiences of Violence, and HIV Vulnerability Among Female Sex Workers in
Coastal Andhra Pradesh, India. International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics,
114(2), 101-105. doi: 10.1016/i.iigo.2011.03.005
Silverman, J.G., Rai, A., Cheng, D.M., Decker, M.R., Coleman, S., Bridden, C., Pardeshi, M.,
Saggurti, N., & Samet, J. H. (2011). Sex Trafficking and Initiation-Related Violence,
Alcohol Use, and HIV Risk Among HIV-Infected Sex Workers in Mumbai, India. The
Journal of Infectious Diseases, 204, 1229-1234. doi: 10.1093/infdis/iir540