Sold for £20: just two of India's million stolen children

Jessica Maw, October 1st, 2008, 1:45pm

India is a country with 11 million abandoned children. Children are kidnapped as well as abandoned resulting in children sold for adoption, often to Westerners; others are trafficked into slavery or the sex trade. Official figures from India report that annually 44,000 children disappear each year. Some of these missing children are recovered but one in four are never traced. The official figures state 44,000 but that number is believed to be much higher as the police are reluctant to register and investigate cases.

A report by India’s human rights commission states that “while some of the children are killed almost immediately, others are working as cheap forced labour in illegal factories/establishments/homes, exploited as sex slaves or forced into the child porn industry, as camel jockeys in the Gulf countries, as child beggars in begging rackets, as victims of illegal adoptions or forced marriages, or perhaps worse than any of these as victims of organ trade and even grotesque cannibalism.”

A previous investigation into an adoption case with Indian children found with their adopted parents from Australia found out that the children were sold by there drunken abusive father without their mother’s knowledge for the equivalent of £20.

India does have a genuine problem with unwanted children with a believed 11 million children in orphanages. India has changed their international adoptions laws to make the process easier. Yet with all these unwanted children; people are still abducting wanted children from their loving parents which is a major concern. The police in India need to start doing their jobs and filing all reports on missing children and do everything in their power to help the families of abducted children.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/07/india.humantrafficking