Learn how we’re tackling child trafficking and exploitation on the Delhi-Howrah Mainline through targeted interventions.
Date: 3rd February 2023
Our experience, and extensive research, means we also know where the greatest dangers lie for these young people so we have been able to directly focus our life-changing interventions to where they are needed most – The Delhi-Howrah Mainline.
This 1,900km section of the country’s extensive and chaotic rail network connects Delhi and Kolkata, crossing northern and eastern India and linking 402 stations.
It is a key part of the infrastructure but also a key route for migration and child trafficking for the purposes of forced labour, child marriage, and commercial sexual exploitation. There is government support for these vulnerable children in just 13 of the stations on this line.
Our research with local stakeholders working in and around the stations estimates that 20,000 children in need of protection pass through this railway line every year.
This is why we’re focusing on this route and working with children, families, railway workers and child protection stakeholders to make it a child friendly network.
We’re collaborating with these people to reach and protect children found alone on this line and settle them back with their families or in foster homes when that is not possible. But even with the whole rail community joining forces we can’t achieve this alone. So we’re working hard to convince India’s decision-makers and authorities to drive this process forward, encouraging the district magistrates, statutory bodies and civil society organisations to play their part in creating a safer network for everyone.
We have established a united response so that when a child is identified on a train the systems are in place to collect them at the next station and ensure there is a safe place for them to go. Then reunite them with their family whenever possible or a foster placement if not. Children will be offered ongoing support with re-enrolment in school, counselling, vocational training, nutrition, healthcare, social welfare schemes and improving livelihoods so that they do not leave the family again.
Together we will make sure everyone involved has the right training and support and we will make this route part of a positive journey for children and a dead end for those trying to exploit and abuse them.
Railway Children will join partners from the Rooted Futures collaboration at the 2026 Skoll World Forum to lead an interactive session on family strengthening and child protection reform.
Over 200 supporters from the rail industry raised more than £60,000 at Railway Children’s Night At The Station event, spending a night in stations across the UK to protect vulnerable children at risk.
Through our flagship youth participation programme, Youth Platform, young people are shaping our training materials, influencing key decisions and ensuring the rail industry truly understand youth vulnerability.
No child wants to survive on the streets. And, through understanding and empowerment, together, we can ensure no child has to.
Julia, 24, grew up as a boy but knew, early on, that the gender she’d been born into was not who she was. Here, she talks to Youth Platform about her journey, and what she wishes she’d know as a ten-year-old boy.
Reflecting on the unique strengths different minds bring to Railway Children and the rich potential of the neurodivergent young people we support.
