Fightingforthechildrensrightsinindia
From DFoundation
Fighting for the children’s rights in India
The current situation:
Child trafficking
Bodhgaya, located in the state of Bihar, is one of the most sacred cities in India for Buddhists. The Prince Siddhartha reached Enlightment here and became the Buddha. Dozens of Buddhist countries have built temples and monasteries in Bodhgaya to allow their pilgrims to come all year round to worship Buddha around the sacred Mahabodhi Temple. However there is a dark side to Bodhgaya which often goes unnoticed: child trafficking.
Indeed, the state of Bihar is one of the poorest in India. A lot of people from the rural tribal districts are living in poverty while they still have a very high child birth rate. These parents are easy prey for traffickers who want to bring children to China primarily. They travel to meet these poor families, who are often uneducated, and convince them to entrust a child to their care. They promise to provide training and work for the child once they arrive in China, to enable him to send money back home. The desperate families often accept the kind and tempting offer. Once the child arrives in China, traffickers call the family to tell them that the child ran away. This is how the ordeal begins ...
Children’s rights
In Bihar there is another serious problem regarding children and their rights. Children from the age of eight are regularly imprisoned, sometimes for minor offenses. Without judging the Indian juvenile justice system, this situation is rather alarming. Under the law, juvenile offenders aged between 8-18 years, after trial must be held in a "remand house” known as a specialized juvenile court facility. But due to the extreme poverty in Bihar state, there is often no specific prison for children. They therefore find themselves trapped in the middle of adult criminals. These prisons are very overcrowded, like most in India, and a room made for four prisoners sometimes houses seventeen persons. Children are the weakest and most vulnerable, and are regularly the worst victims of this disastrous situation. Whatever their mistake, tort or crime might be, it does not deserve this ordeal.
Begging children
We also face another problem; vulnerable orphan children are used for begging by powerful mafia to make a profit. These mafia criminals often inflict mutilations on the children (many children are blinded) to provoke the pity of tourists and pilgrims, who give money that will be directly handed over to the mafia. It means the child will grow up blind and never be able to fend for themselves.
Our projects
On numerous occasions, D-foundation denounced these abuses and managed to bring a number of people to justice. However, it is essential today to organize information and prevention amongst the poor families. With this aim, D-Foundation director Hari-Om wrote several articles in local newspapers to prevent these abuses. However, as many parents are neither able to read nor write, it is necessary to travel within these tribes to explain the situation, along with trying to improve their living conditions. We want to teach these communities about issues such as family planning, so they have only as many children as they can provide for. In addition, we want to offer them legal assistance, to enable them to investigate their disappeared children (at a recent visit to these local tribes at least 50 children were missing). To help the situation here, our aim is to provide support and financial assistance to families and to establish schools and education centres.
Regarding minors imprisoned, funds will be needed to create a specialized centre for minors along with further funds when legal assistance is required.
Finally, regarding the problem of forced child begging and mutilation, we want to build up a connection with various NGOs in Bodhgaya, in order to fight against the mafia. We also need to inform people to avoid giving money to these children. Finally we want to help these children by taking them out of this environment and offering them a home, food and bring them back to the education system.
As the D-Foundation office is located in Sarnath, a 5 hour road trip from Bodhgaya, it would be difficult to really support this community and its children from here.
Therefore it is now our priority to create a second office in Bodhgaya, in order to accommodate families, giving them time and support.
For all of these projects any help from you is most welcome and will be used to help these victims of injustice in India.
Thank you for your trust and kindness.
The D-Foundation team.
