Daily Times

NEW DELHI: South Asian nations will set up a toll-free helpline and online platform to fight human trafficking, one of the region’s biggest problems, and trace the thousands of children who go missing in the region annually, India’s government said late on Wednesday. Ministers from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Nepal came to the agreement after a conference on child protection held under the auspices of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). South Asia, with India at its centre, is the fastest-growing and second-largest region for human trafficking in the world, after East Asia, according to the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime. India’s women and child development ministry said delegates from the eight South Asian countries adopted a series of measures to boost cooperation to end child exploitation. “(These include) regional cross sharing and programming on ICT initiatives to trace missing children, working towards establishing a uniform toll free helpline, developing a regional strategy and common standards for addressing all forms of sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking,” it said in a statement. There are no accurate figures on the number of people being trafficked within South Asia, but activists say thousands of mostly women and children are trafficked within India and as well as from its poorer neighbours Nepal and Bangladesh. Many are sold into forced marriage or bonded labour working in middle class homes as domestic servants, in small shops and hotels or confined to brothels where they are repeatedly raped.