Sexual slavery without borders: trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation in India

Trafficking in women and children is a gross violation of human rights. However, this does not prevent an estimated 800 000 women and children to be trafficked each year across international borders. Eighty per cent of trafficked persons end in forced sex work. India has been identified as one of the Asian countries where trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation has reached alarming levels. While there is a considerable amount of internal trafficking from one state to another or within states, India has also emerged as a international supplier of trafficked women and children to the Gulf States and South East Asia, as well as a destination country for women and girls trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation from Nepal and Bangladesh. Trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation is a highly profitable and low risk business that preys on particularly vulnerable populations. This paper presents an overview of the trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation (CSE) in India; identifies the health impacts of CSE; and suggest strategies to respond to trafficking and related issues

The European Socio-Demographic Schedule (ESDS): rationale, principles and development

Objective: To design an internationally valid and practical instrument on which data can be recorded for small areas that describes the sociodemographic characteristics known to be associated with psychiatric morbidity and service use. Method: (1) Identification of a set of sociodemographic characteristics which, on the basis of currently available evidence, would be expected to influence needs for and provision of mental health care in different countries. (2) Selection of a subset of these for inclusion in the schedule based on likely degree of cross-cultural validity and on the types and formats of the data routinely available in each country. (3) Revision of the schedule following a pilot by EPCAT members. Results: The European Socio-Demographic Schedule (ESDS) was successfully employed to collect sociodemographic data in seven catchment areas. Differences were found between the areas in terms of availability of data as well as in the resulting profiles. Conclusion: The ESDS has been shown to be applicable in a number of European countries