18 September 2007, New Delhi (BBA): The Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons Ambassador Mark P. Lagon and his colleagues met with enthusiastic former bonded child laborers, who are leading the fight against trafficking today under the banner of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement).

These children have not only transformed their lives as freed child laborers, but are the catalysts and leaders in the movement to end child labor and child trafficking into forced labor. They include 16-year-old winner of the 2006 International Children’s Peace Prize Om Prakash, Deepak, and Rakesh Kumar. Om Prakash was freed by Bachpan Bachao Andolan activists from debt bondage. He led to the filing of a PIL in the Rajasthan State Human Rights Commission against school authorities who were taking extra money from children at school. Taking notice, the Rajasthan State Human Rights Commission ordered the schools to return the money taken from the poor children, setting a precedent for the right to free and quality education.

Fourteen-year-old child activist Deepak hung physically onto the traffickers in a train and stopped the train to prevent the traffickers from taking young boys. While his friend Sunil was being thrashed by the traffickers, Deepak held onto the traffickers and cried out. Due to his efforts, 5 traffickers (3 men and 2 women) were arrested at Raxual (at the Indo-Nepal border) and 9 children were saved from slavery.

Rakesh Kumar, a former bonded child laborer and current jury member of the World Children’s Prize for the Rights of Children, representing all child slaves and children whose births are not registered, Deepa, Seema, Babli, and many other former child domestic slaves also comprised the delegation met by Amb. Lagon.

Amb. Lagon presented the certificate of the “2007 Hero in the Fight against Modern-Day Slavery” to Mr. Kailash Satyarthi, founder of Bachpan Bachao Andolan and international child rights activist to these child leaders, as a symbolic gesture. Mr. Satyarthi was named a Hero in this fight, as a grassroots activist making the elimination of child labor a global cause. Mr. Satyarthi freed all of these children from slavery.

Speaking at a press meeting and citing the example of the employers’ mob attack on Bachpan Bachao Andolan’s rehabilitation center sheltering more than 100 child bonded laborers rescued from gold smithing in the May 2007, Amb. Lagon said that the phenomenon of trafficking into forced labor is fuelled by greedy and complicit officials. While lauding India’s efforts to end trafficking for sexual slavery, Amb. Lagon emphasized that much still needed to be done on the front of bonded labor and forced labor.

Amb. Lagon and the delegation also planted trees on the compound of the Bachpan Bachao Andolan rehabilitation center as a memoir of their visit.

Umesh Kumar Gupta
Advocacy & Communication Unit
Bachpan Bachao Andolan
L-6, Kalkaji
New Delhi - 110019
http://www.bba.org.in