#itpa

In Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, Mauricio Ruiz has turned his love for nature into action by working with the community to reforest a critical stretch of the nation’s most endangered forest, and by using drones to help him reach his goal of planting 15 million new trees.

Mauricio created the Institute for Environmental Preservation, ITPA, when he was just 14 to fight back against rampant deforestation. With government and private funding, and a law in place that protects the remaining forest, Mauricio shows us what 25 years of civilian-led action looks like. Locals are paid to extinguish illegally set fires and to operate a nursery that grows 100,000 trees a year. They raise 58 native species critical for biodiversity and convince private landowners to reforest their land.

Welfare through rehabilitation is the hallmark of the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act (ITPA), 1986. Adult women, whether in sex work voluntarily or not, are rescued from brothels and put up in protective homes, with or without their consent. In 'Raided', a recent study conducted by Maharashtra-based SANGRAM (Sampada Gramin Mahila Sanstha) and VAMP (Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad), 193 of the 243 women interviewed were adult, consenting sex workers.

These homes ignore inmates' needs and are often abusive, leading women to commit suicide, to riot or to escape. Without legal resources to negotiate their freedom, they languish in homes for months, or even years. Upon release, they are unwelcome at home and return to a life of penury. As per 'Raided', 77 per cent of women return to sex work. Kimberly Walters and Vibhuti Ramachandran, both ethnographers of ITPA homes, report that women perceive such 'shelter-based detention' as an 'extended mode of trafficking', like the initial entry into sex work. Both authors note that the constitutionality of these ITPA provisions is suspect.

The 2018 Trafficking Bill is unfortunately baked in the crucible of the ITPA. Its paternalist provisions on raids, rescue and rehabilitation allow for a police officer, based solely on his belief, to raid and 'rescue' a trafficked person and conduct a medical examination irrespective of the victim's wishes. The victim is placed in a protection home for short-term relief and later in a rehabilitation home for an unspecified, but 'reasonable' period based on the order of a magistrate or child welfare committee.

Where an adult survivor applies to the magistrate for release, the magistrate may reject it if she believes that the request has not been made voluntarily; there is no provision for appeal. Survivors are to be repatriated, but the status of an unwilling survivor is unclear. The government may designate existing shelter homes, including those set up under the ITPA, for rehabilitation. There is thus substantial institutional and procedural overlap between the ITPA and the bill.

The trafficking bill aims to be visionary with compensation and comprehensive services, but it ignores community-based approaches to rehabilitation and fails to comply with the Supreme Court's decision in the Karmaskar case that rehabilitation must be voluntary. It ignores the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) guidelines on trafficking and human rights, which require that rescue operations not harm the rights and dignity of survivors, that they are not subjected to mandatory HIV test or be held in custody, and that they be allowed to participate in developing anti-trafficking interventions.