Gargi Saha is a Child Protection Specialist with more than 20 years of work experience on issues of children and adolescents across India. She worked with CHILDLINE India and UNICEF. Currently,she is working in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The article highlights the humanitarian issues, especially after the floods that children in Bihar faced post -Kosi floods in 2008 when the author was working there as a State Consultant Anti Trafficking with UNICEF Bihar.

Introduction

Over several decades, floods have become a routine part of the North Bihar region. While typically, it occurs once a year, there has been a tendency for recurrence even multiple times in a year, e.g.,in the year 2021. It dramatically impacts inhabitants living in those regions, completely rattling their everyday lives. Their livelihood opportunities get curtailed, leading to more dire consequences like forced displacement, unsafe migration, and family separation. Data from the Government of Bihar shows that in Bihar in the past five years (2015-2020), the total number of disaster-affected villages was 29,733, while the number of affected people was 527.49 lakhswith 398,508 houses damaged. While in Saharsa alone, a total of 622 villages were affected,2274 houses were destroyed, and 10.84 lakhs of people were affected by disasters. The impact on children, one of the most vulnerable populations, is reflected through several hazards,including the floods in Bihar like an increase in child labor, child marriages, child trafficking, and unsafe migration, which results in insecurities for communities and children living there. Children also get abandoned, become orphans, and are separated from their immediate families.

The Kosi floods, August 2008

The Kosi floods, bringing massive destruction in early August 2008 was one of the most disastrous courses of events, affecting thousands of lives, both human beings and livestock. The gravity of the calamity was the highest in Bihar, one of India’s poorest and most marginalized states. Around this time, I got associated with UNICEF as State Consultant for Anti-trafficking to work in the region after the Kosi floods. This was challenging as I had never worked in a rural area before this assignment. To familiarize myself with the territory, I had to undertake a long road journey to Saharsa,
one of the flood-affected districts in the northern part of the state, a completely new region.

Experiences from the field – a Child Protection practitioner’s perspective

The next day of my recruitment, as State Consultants, we were handed copies of the Core Commitment for Children (CCCs), the specialized UN handbook for working in an emergency context across any part of the globe. With an unfamiliar car driver, I set off to an unknown land. Amidst the chaos in the affected districts of Saharsa, Madhepura, Supaul, Araria, and Purnea, as part of our rapid assessment, it was clear that some of the most marginalized and cut-off villages were not even registered with the district administration. This meant that no supplies or immediate relief items could be sent to the unregistered villages. Thousands of humans and cattle were washed away and displaced, there were numerous displacement camps on the roadside, the starving communities were shifted to local schools and Panchayat Bhavan rooftops for over three months, and the overcrowded hostels/guest houses and lodges were full of the development agencies that had come to provide immediate relief and support. Most importantly, there was no data on the number of children who were dead, vulnerable, victims of abuse/ exploitation, runaways, survivors of the disasters, or forcefully sold, trafficked, or ‘taken away by the perpetrators or placement agencies. In due course of time, with support from an international UNICEF consultant, we could gather and collate data related to hundreds of villages that were still not covered by the district administration. We could reach out to many of these villages with relief items and materials through the UN and government support.

Initial challenges on the ground

There was chaos and confusion during the first few weeks of implementing the ‘Sambal’ project. The disagreements arose due to the differences in ideologies and beliefs of individual Consultants and local partners, including the national and International NGOs and the government. Theywanted to implement their policies. All this led to increased disparities and a stark mismatch between the needs of communities and what was being offered.

Direct impact on children and women–Some Random Powerful dialogues

During one of my visits to a flood-affected village, one young villager mentioned, ‘The worst sufferers in any calamity are the most marginalized people like us. Even the calamities choose the most oppressed and poor. Have you ever heard floods hitting big cities/towns like Patna?’. Those words hit me hard and made me ponder over them. Once, while conversing with a hotel manager at Madhepura, I said sympathetically, “Let’s pray that this
region is no longer affected by floods and there is an end to this kind of destruction of vulnerable women, children, and poor masses”. He quickly retorted, “No, please don’t ever say that. Because of floods, we can build and add one more level to our buildings. Every year, we wait for floods to arrive, as we can make so much profit to keep expanding our properties.’ I was left speechless. This reflects how disaster establishes the nexus between politics, power, and money, and people tend to seek profits from disasters that bring dire consequences for others. This also suggests that disasters are not apolitical. In another incident, I was asked to visit a naked woman who kept hiding behind a broken toilet in a village. She had lost her mental sanity entirely inthe aftermath of the floods. However, she kept silent and aloof when I tried to strike up a conversation. I gave up after a point but remained very disturbed. She was pretty vulnerable as anyone could harm her, leaving her as a victim of sexual abuse or rape. In another case, after receiving an emergency call to share details of a train originating from Supaul, a medium of transportation used for carrying about 100 children hidden under the sleeping berths and toiles. With the support of the GRP and local CSO partner in Saharsa, we could stop this train in the early hours, before dawn, rescue these children, and get cases registered against the trafficker, who was a Railway Protection Forces suspended official. After three months, a team of us representing UNICEF, Save the Children, and the Bihar government went for documentation purposes. During one of the visits to the Saharsa railway station, where we had successfully rescued about 100 children, we interacted and met with local vendors, GRP, and railways officials, including the station master. When asked if they witnessed any incidents of trafficking, forced labor, or abuse on the platforms or inside running trains, they vehemently said, “No, after the massive rescue operation of children who were being trafficked through the early morning train from Supaul, there has been no such incidents on this platform or area.” This definitely gave hope in terms of the short to mid-term impacts, even if this could be short lived. An international consultant for UNICEF, an American, was recruited to assess the situation of floods in North Bihar. Once while traveling with a convoy of UN vehicles with consultants, including himself, the road from Supaul to Saharsa was packed by a mob with adolescents, youth, mostly drunk men. They had used sticks and tree trunks to block the highway. When asked, we learned that some villages hadn’t received any relief items, which led to increased anger and dissatisfaction with the then government. Without even consulting us, he got off his car and dashed on the road to remove a huge tree trunk blocking our way. Within no time after this inconsiderate act, the mob of villagers surrounded him, infuriated. After much negotiation and dialogue, I could convince them to leave us. As CP, unlike WASH, Nutrition, Health, and others, we wouldn’t distribute relief items, food, or supply materials to the community. Our role was primarily to build their awareness and skills through inputs on child and women protection-related issues. The above incident clearly shows that it isn’t easy to work specifically for children and in aid sectors, as foreign funding also requires support from the local community; there is a need for more conversations.

Documenting the project outcomes

Humanitarian disasters like floods lead to multiple vulnerabilities impacting the entire population. Debts increase, leading to a vicious cycle of poverty and many other insecurities. This further results in children becoming easy targets, owing to their vulnerabilities, leading to a steep increase in crimes against children like trafficking, forced and bonded labor, sexual abuse, and child marriage. Children are separated from their families and deprived of education and livelihoods. These further lead to their mental health getting impacted. Girls become particularly vulnerable if data doesn’t capture them- they become invisible. UNICEF, in partnership with the Bihar govt. And Save the Children came up with a comprehensive report on the achievements of the Sambal project. As a result of the six months floods response intervention project, 100 Child marriages were prevented, and 1000 children were prevented from getting traffic to other destinations while rescuing 500 children from getting trafficked with or without agencies or individual agents.
Reflections onthe impact of our unintended actions

Among various forms of violence and harmful social norms affecting children, separation of children, and child marriage were one of the most significant issues that came up with the trafficking of children or child or forced labor. During one of our visits to a village, we were supposed to interview a beneficiary whose marriage was prohibited as part of the Sambal project intervention. We talked to her family before meeting the girl. The girl, around 14 years of age with long hair till about her waist, was carrying a pot of water around her waist from a well. As I tried to interrogate her, she made an angry face at me and left with no intention of talking to us. Later, we were told that she was heartbroken and felt ashamed as her marriage was broken.

Challenges faced:
– During natural calamities such as floods, the total affected villages might not get reflected in the master list prepared by the government. A  large number of villages remain cutoff, and since their names aren’t reflected in the master list, they are deprived of the relief items and benefits of schemes by the government. This directly affects their children.
– Similarly, the importance of counting of total population, whether humans or livestock, loses sight during massive disasters and leads to incorrect calculations by the district administration.
– Due to extreme poverty and hopelessness, many parents and families sell off their children for as meager as Rs. 500 or 1000 to ‘known’ and sometimes even ‘unknown’ persons who are traffickers but pose as ‘well-wishers’ for the families. These children are trafficked to faraway cities like Delhi, Mumbai, or Telangana with false promises of good jobs and money. Most of the time, they are abused and exploited and lose touch with families as the traffickers cut off all ties and seize their addresses or mobiles.
– Systemic corruption leads many defenders of the law, such as police or railway police, to become child ‘traffickers’ or help these touts for small or large amounts of money.

Key learnings:

1. Challenges a development professional might face working in humanitarian situations, especially floods
   – From the experiences of working in disaster situations, it is clear that the most vulnerable communities which face the brunt of disasters and natural calamities are most often the marginalized communities such as the Mahadalits, and Musahar communities in Bihar. These communities live in lowlands that quickly get submerged in deep waters.
   – During flood assessments, it should be mandatory that counting of populations should be undertaken jointly by the government, UN agencies, and INGOs to verify and confirm that all vulnerable people and villages submerged or affected have been effectively counted.
   – As Child Protection professionals, we must fulfill our duty of explaining to children or adolescents our primary stakeholders affected by disasters (those we reach out to through our programming), followed by their families, the reasons for our action- “Why we do what we do.”
   – We really need to make additional efforts to talk to the child survivors/victims, listen without being judgmental of their side of the story and then explain the reasons for our actions that impacted their lives. This will not only help to justify our actions that might have changed their lives forever but also for them to appreciate or understand ‘what is right and wrong truly’ and the reasons and
   consequences of our actions on their lives.
   2. External aid needs contextual sensitivity
   –  We must sensitize and educate ourselves about the local contexts reasonably well before designing programs or undertaking interventions for the communities we are working for. This could also mean befriending a local person who could give you the best advice and suggestions about the context, sensitivities, and challenges.
   – Natural disasters like floods lead to increased cases of violence against children and women. This is one of the key factors why children are married off at an early age due to increased insecurity in the families – the fact that parents and immediate family members might not live longer to marry off their daughters or sons causes insecurities within the family, especially the elderly.
   – Factors such as poverty, ignorance, and illiteracy might be overrated.
   – Children shouldn’t be considered part of statistics or data collection tools only. We must give a face to every child rather than treating them as another quantitative number that would help us in our project interventions. The final aim shouldn’t be only tokenism, putting a tick mark to ensure our activity is completed when we achieve what we wanted, e.g., preventing a child from getting married or getting trafficked.
   3. Need for a diverse set of partnerships
   –  UN agencies or partners should take local communities and critical stakeholders in confidence and treat them as equal partners while fully empathizing with them and understanding their perspectives before kick-starting any interventions. Otherwise, this may backfire or act as a barrier to achieving the program outcomes we had aimed for.
   – Joining hands with local level PRI, CBOs, and groups like Jeevika, Mahila Samakhyas, and Women’s SHGs is equally essential, as it helps in facilitating dialogues, educating us on their context, supporting our programs with various groups and acting as bridges, if any conflict occurs in the communities due to our actions or otherwise.
   4. Technical understanding and quick adaptation to emerging situations
   – In India, human and child trafficking is primarily undertaken through rail and road routes. It has often been witnessed that the railway police become part of the perpetrators’ nexus and allow/ facilitate crimes against children, women or vulnerable groups.
   – Sometimes, law enforcement or police might be genuinely ignorant of such heinous crimes and don’t prosecute or punish traffickers as they pose as close relatives’ well-known’ to the children.
   – Hence, proper orientations and capacity building of the law enforcement authorities, especially police, including the railway forces, are critical in identifying and rescuing potential victims of trafficking or abuse.