Few South Asian officials were found to be willing to look into the problem. There were Nepalese women forced into prostitution in Mumbai who were willing to go back home, but the Nepalese government refused to take responsibility for them. No action could be taken against a Nepalese man who came to India to sell his daughter, who finally landed up in a Pakistani brothel. Nothing could be done when a SAARC woman working as a maid in another country was battered and exploited.

Meanwhile, thesituation only worsened with children being trafficked from Bangladesh and Pakistan for use as camel jockeys in the Arab nations. In 1997, a group of some 25 Bangladeshi girls, who were found begging in the streets of Jeddah, were brought to Mumbai. Many did not even know their names or the names of their native town.

Bangladesh initiated a sustained effort for regional cooperation on the issue at the Tenth SAARC Summit at Colombo last year. A document was drafted and, given the magnitude of the problem, much was expected from it. But going by the proceedings of a workshop on the draft in Mumbai, NGOs and human rights activists in all the SAARC nations are dissatisfied with it. The SAARC Convention on Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Women and Children for Prostitution was seen to be too narrow to address the problem.

Activists feel that the document should have encompassed the whole ambit of human trafficking -- from sweatshop labour to child pornography sites on the Internet -- instead ofrestricting itself to ``women and children'' trafficked ``for prostitution''. If the idea was to unite the SAARC nations to fight the malaise, this draft is inadequate.

``Camel jockeying can continue. One can still take busloads of children to beg in the Arab countries,'' says an indignant Sheela Barse, the human rights activist who organised the workshop. ``In fact, they were treating the draft as an official secret. No people's participation.'' The workshop was attended, along with representatives of UN and international agencies in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, by G.P. Thapa, DIG, Nepal Police.

The draft, for instance, treats women as `victims' of trafficking, while the workshop opted for the more humane term of `persons affected'. It does not address the question of the large mass of ``stateless individuals'' who, feels Dr Faquir Hussain of the Pakistan Law Commission, must find mention. ``The issue is complex and acute in the South Asian region, which hosts many political refugees and economicmigrants. Appropriate provisions may be inserted in the draft convention providing for state responsibility to accept repatriation,'' he stated.

Natasha Ahmad of Bangladesh, whose organisation first held a workshop on the subject in 1996, was insistent about differentiating between ``trafficking in women'' and ``trafficking in children''. The draft is expected to be the starting point for the codification of law in her country. Ahmad is afraid that unless it is specific, it might affect the flow of Bangladeshi labour into India and Pakistan.

Already, the approach in Bangladesh is ad hoc, she says. Women were simply banned from working in the Arab countries. The ban has recently been relaxed for nurses. ``But at the immigration department, any woman who applies to go to the Arab nations is rebuffed.''

Statistics on the number of children sent to the Arab nations for camel jockeying is hard to come by. ``It is only when a family discovers that the children of some other family have returned that theyrealise that their child should have come home too. Many children are left to tend the camels in the desert once the season is over,'' says Ahmad. The parents are so poor that they are more concerned about the money they were to have been paid.

The draft, which was felt to lack clarity of vision, has come in for heavy editing. Its very title has been changed to widen its ambit. The vague, the unnecessary and the uncertain have been struck off. While the draft left it to individual countries to legislate on extradition, ``if so permitted by their laws,'' the amended version makes it mandatory for states to take the convention as the basis for extradition.

While the original draft shied from putting any time limit for signing extradition treaties between the states, a one-year deadline has been proposed. Dr N.R. Madhava Menon, member, Law Commission of India, recommended that a protocol be included under which individuals and NGOs in the SAARC countries can petition their government on violations in othercountries. Going a step further, the workshop proposed, on the lines of the UN International Court, a Regional Court with original jurisdiction.

While the draft mentioned the establishment of a Regional Task Force to implement the convention, Menon also introduced the concept of a regional fund: ``There is so much money in prostitution; combating it is not possible only through pious declarations.'' Stateless persons will also have to be guaranteed equality and equal protection.

The dreaded word `repatriation' was removed from Article I to deny the option to magistrates. ``There are women who do not know if they are from Bihar or Bangladesh,'' said Preeti Patkar of Prerna, which works in Mumbai's Kamathipura. ``If their country of origin is not proved, how do we `repatriate' them?''

However, many issues remain unresolved. ``What do we do about the stateless people of Tibet, who live in India but are not a part of SAARC?" asks Barse, who has been working on trafficking since 1980. "Or Burma, which sharesborders with India and Bangladesh but is not a member of SAARC?''

She also rued the absence of inputs from the Indian Labour Ministry, because thousands of migrants cross borders in South Asia in search of work. ``Do we have to push them out at the borders, or should we have a system of work permits, which will make life easier for both us and them?'' she asks.

The issues of trafficking and cross-border labour in South Asia are headed for a turning point. And they are far too large to be entrusted to a few bureaucrats. If they are to move effectively against the problem, governments must tap into the experience of the non-governmental sector.