The Keralam government has proposed that a standard operating procedure (SOP) on missing children/child or human trafficking should contain a prevention component covering identification of vulnerable families and children, community-level emotional and social support, frontline (teacher/anganwadi) sensitisation, awareness education, and counselled repatriation.
Enforcement alone will not be enough since emotional, social and economic vacuum around the child drives most disappearances.
It has also stressed that the form of prevention should be left to each State to develop according to its local conditions since what suits Keralam’s near-universal institutional systems may not suit another State.
The proposals were made by the State’s Women and Child Development (WCD) department at a zonal consultation for southern States convened by a committee constituted by the Supreme Court in the wake of directives passed by the court in a case.
Protocols
