Children with disabilities (in education)
25. Trafficking Overview
25.01 The New Nation, in an article, Trafficking of women and children from Bangladesh, undated, stated that:
‗Lack of awareness and respect for human rights of women and children make them vulnerable to exploitation. The unequal balance of power between men and women paves the way for trafficking leaving women and girls powerless. As a result, women and girls get less education and less access to resources. Consequently the
overwhelming majority of the victims of trafficking are women and girls. It is also found that existing social structure, economic system, cultural condition and geographical setting of Bangladesh affect trafficking of women and children.‘ 472
25.02 The New Nation article continued:
‗Bangla equivalent of the word 'trafficking' is 'pachar'. In Bangla the phrase nari o shishu pachar means illegal transfer of women and children from one place to another. 20 main points in 16 western districts of Bangladesh near the Indian border are used by the traffickers. The main trafficking route is Dhaka-Mumbai-Karachi-Dubai. Bangladesh is a source and transit country for men, women, and children. Both internal and cross-border trafficking exists in Bangladesh. In the case of internal trafficking, women and children are often taken away from their homes on false promises of a better life with good employment and traffickers sell them to brothels. Women and children from Bangladesh are also trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation. Estimates on the number of
trafficked women and children are difficult to make. However, various studies reveal that over 1 million women and children have been trafficked out of the country in the last 30 years. Human trafficking is an international problem. In Bangladesh, a UNICEF report says, approximately 400 women and children fall victim to trafficking each month. Most
470 IRIN News (UNOCHA), ‗Bangladesh: Moving towards universal birth registration, 15 July 2008 http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,,,BGD,,4993ea3b14,0.html Accessed 1 June 2009
471 UNICEF, Children and women in urban slums worse off than rest of the country, reveals BBS-UNICEF survey‘, 23 June 2010 http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/media_54056.html Accessed 10 July 2013
472 The New Nation, Trafficking of women and children from Bangladesh,
http://thenewnationbd.com/newsdetails.aspx?newsid=32484 Accessed 22 July 2013
The main text of this COI Report contains the most up to date publicly available information as at 31 July 2013. 157
of them are between the ages of 12 and 16 and are forced to work in the commercial sex industry.‘ 473
25.03 The US State Department‘s Trafficking in Persons Report of June 2013 (USSD Trafficking in Persons Report 2013), released on 19 June 2013, stated:
‗Some of the Bangladeshi men and women who migrate willingly to the Gulf, Maldives, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Europe, and elsewhere for work subsequently face conditions indicative of forced labor, such as restrictions on movement, withholding of passports, threats of force, physical or sexual abuse, and threats of detention or deportation for immigration violations. Before their departure, many migrant workers assume debt to pay high recruitment fees, imposed legally by recruitment agencies belonging to the Bangladesh Association of International
Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) and illegally by unlicensed sub-agents; this places some migrant workers in debt bondage. Some recruitment agencies and agents also commit recruitment fraud, including contract switching, in which they promise one type of job and conditions but then change the job, employer, conditions, or salary after arrival.
There are reports of an increased number of Bangladeshis transiting through Nepal to obtain Nepalese visas and work permits for employment in the Gulf; some are trafficking victims.‘ 474
See Section 33: Employment rights
25.04 International Christian Concern, in a report dated 2 July 2013, stated that:
‗One of Bangladesh‘s serious social problems is human trafficking, with nearly 13 women and children trafficked from Bangladesh every day. Low-income Christian families are commonly targeted by traffickers because of their faith and economic vulnerability.
‗In a recent incident, Islamists are bizarrely seeking to retrieve Christian children who were rescued from traffickers and forcibly converted to Islam. Despite the children being forcefully converted from Christianity to Islam, they are viewed by their Islamic captors as Muslims for life, according to Charisma News.
‗More disturbingly, since discovering the role of Christians in the rescue of the children, radical Islamists have gone on the offensive and accused Christians of forcibly
converting people with financial incentives. ―Most Christian missionaries are converting people by offering money among the poor people to give them a leg up," says
Nizampuri, a leader in the radical Islamic political group Hefazat-e-Islam, as reported by World Watch Monitor. ―Once the poor people take money, the missionaries put pressure on them to be converted.‖
‗As if that were not absurd enough, Islamists have even issued threats against the Christian rescuers, in a determined effort to reclaim the rescued children. ―The madrassa leaders came to know about the involvement of Christians in the rescue.
473 The New Nation, Trafficking of women and children from Bangladesh,
http://thenewnationbd.com/newsdetails.aspx?newsid=32484 Accessed 22 July 2013
474 United States Department of State, 2013 Trafficking in Persons Report - Bangladesh, 19 June 2013, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/51c2f3d818.html Accessed 25 July 2013
They know about our involvement. I am scared and trying to be careful,‖ says an ICC contact.‘ 475
See section 19: Christians
25.05 The USSD Trafficking in Persons Report 2013 further noted that:
‗Bangladesh does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. The government drafted rules to implement the 2012 Human Trafficking Deterrence and Suppression Act (HTDSA) and began prosecuting cases under the law. However, the lack of adequate law enforcement efforts and institutional weaknesses continued to contribute to the trafficking of Bangladeshi migrant workers abroad. The government took limited steps to regulate fraudulent recruitment agents and their unlicensed subagents. Inadequate trafficking victim protection remained a serious problem.‘ 476
See Women and Children Trafficking in Bangladesh and Societal Perception towards Victim‘s Family by N. M. Sajjadul Hoque, 2013 477 for further background.
Internal trafficking
25.06 The USSD Trafficking in Persons Report 2013 also noted that:
‗Within the country, some Bangladeshi children and adults are subjected to sex trafficking, domestic servitude, and forced and bonded labor, in which traffickers or recruiters exploit an initial debt assumed by a worker as part of the terms of
employment. Some street children are coerced into criminality or forced to beg; begging ringmasters sometimes maim children as a means to earn more money. In some
instances, children are sold into bondage by their parents, while others are induced into labor or commercial sexual exploitation through fraud and physical coercion. … In some instances, girls and boys as young as eight years old are subjected to forced
prostitution within the country, living in slave-like conditions in secluded environments.
Trafficking within the country often occurs from poorer, more rural regions, to cities.
Many brothel owners and pimps coerce Bangladeshi girls to take steroids to make them more attractive to clients, with devastating side effects.‘ 478
Prosecution
25.07 The USSD Trafficking in Persons Report 2013 stated that:
‗The Government of Bangladesh maintained anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts during the reporting period. The 2012 HTDSA generally prohibits and punishes all forms of human trafficking, though it does not prohibit the fraudulent recruitment of labor
475 International Christian Concern (ICC), Christian Persecution Increases amid Protests in Bangladesh, 2 July 2013 http://www.persecution.org/2013/07/02/christian-persecution-increases-amid-protests-in-bangladesh/
Accessed 18 July 2013
476 United States Department of State, 2013 Trafficking in Persons Report - Bangladesh, 19 June 2013, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/51c2f3d818.html Accessed 25 July 2013
477 17th World Congress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Women and Children Trafficking in Bangladesh and Societal Perception towards Victim‘s Family, 2013
http://www.mecon.nomadit.co.uk/pub/conference_epaper_download.php5?PaperID=8107&MIMEType=application/
pdf. Accessed 22 July 2013
478 United States Department of State, 2013 Trafficking in Persons Report - Bangladesh, 19 June 2013, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/51c2f3d818.html Accessed 25 July 2013
The main text of this COI Report contains the most up to date publicly available information as at 31 July 2013. 159
migrants in the absence of proof of the recruiter's knowledge of forced labor. Prescribed penalties for labor trafficking offenses are five to 12 years' imprisonment and a fine of not less than approximately the equivalent of $600, and prescribed penalties for sex trafficking offenses range from five years' imprisonment to the death sentence. These penalties are sufficiently stringent, and commensurate with those prescribed for other serious crimes, such as rape. In the reporting period, the government drafted but did not yet adopt implementing rules for the HTDSA. The new law repeals the sections of the Repression of Women and Children Act (WCA) that prohibited the trafficking of women and children for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation or involuntary servitude;
however, cases filed under these sections before the passage of the HTDSA would still be valid and would come under the jurisdiction of the HTDSA.
‗In 2012, the government reported investigating 67 and prosecuting 129 alleged trafficking cases, compared with 143 cases investigated and 80 cases prosecuted in 2011. During the reporting period, the government convicted eight trafficking offenders, and sentenced at least five of them to life imprisonment under Sections 5 (prohibiting
―women trafficking‖) and Section 6(1) (prohibiting ―girl trafficking‖) of the WCA. This is a decrease from the 14 convictions obtained in 2011, with eight offenders sentenced to life imprisonment.‘ 479