Investments are needed in basic infrastructure – rural roads, water supply and sanitation, electrification, safe affordable public transport systems, better lighting of streets and settlements. Making infrastructure work better for women is a critical step in the empowerment of women.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, a human rights lawyer and former UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, once said: “Traffickers fish in the stream of migration." What does this mean? It means that trafficking is more likely to occur within a series of migration, when men and women are on the move in search of new opportunities, better incomes and better lives in unfamiliar and strange surroundings.
Girls and women today have far more opportunities and role models than their mothers and grandmothers, but there is much more to be done.
