Bangladesh needs to find out the shortcomings in its policies and strengthen its capacity to prevent human trafficking and migrant smuggling. Besides, multilateral cooperation among countries facing challenges in this regard needs to be strengthened to properly address the issue. Also the issue of trafficking in persons (TIP) has to be looked at holistically and evaluate the efficacy of current policy frameworks and strategies in this regard, say experts.
In a hybrid seminar, the experts have also asked international actors to come forward to prevent human trafficking and migrant smuggling. The number of Bangladeshis being trafficked and smuggled ranged from 3,000 to 30,000 annually. Preventing trafficking is the key. However, it’s not as easy as it sounds because there are many difficult political issues.
The number of convictions decreased, while law enforcement continued to deny credible reports of official complicity in trafficking, forced labour and sex trafficking of Rohingya, and child sex trafficking, including in licensed brothels, and did not demonstrate efforts to identify victims or investigate these persistent reports. While international organisations identified signs of trafficking in hundreds of migrant workers returning, the government, instead of screening them for trafficking indicators, arrested them on vague charges, including for damaging the country’s image.
The level of prosecution is very dismal because the government has not dedicated enough resources to pre-trial investigations and the Women and Children Violence Protection Tribunal that tackles human trafficking, is both overburdened with cases and is uninitiated in trafficking cases. The biggest problem with trafficking from Bangladesh is of course the inability to successfully address the issue of high recruitment fees which leads to victims becoming entrapped into bonded labour.
The problems are multifarious and require political will to rectify the systemic faults that exist. Unless we start making some changes, Bangladesh’s position is not likely to see improvement in the next year’s report.
