research paper on human trafficking in bangladesh

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Human trafficking: results of a 5-year theory-based evaluation of interventions to prevent trafficking of women from south asia.

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Corrigendum: Human trafficking: Results of a 5-year theory-based evaluation of interventions to prevent trafficking of women from South Asia

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• 1 Gender Violence & Health Centre, Department of Global Health & Development, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom
• 2 Lumos Foundation, London, United Kingdom
• 3 Faculty of Population Health Science, Institute for Global Health, University College London, London, United Kingdom

Preventing modern slavery is of global interest, but evidence on interventions remains weak. This paper presents findings from a 5-year theory-based evaluation of an empowerment and knowledge-building intervention to prevent the exploitation of South Asian female migrant workers. The evaluation used realist evaluation techniques to examine the intervention mechanisms, outcomes, and context. Findings from qualitative and quantitative data from Nepal, India, and Bangladesh indicate that the intervention mechanisms (trainings) were not well-targeted, not delivered by appropriate trainers, and did not address participants' expectations or concerns. The outcomes of empowerment and migration knowledge were not achieved due to poor integration of context-related factors, flawed assumptions about the power inequalities, including barriers preventing women from asserting their rights. Ultimately, interventions to prevent exploitation of migrant workers should be developed based on strong evidence about the social, political, and economic realities of their migration context, especially in destination settings.

Introduction

Human trafficking is a global phenomenon that touches most corners of the world, with ~40.3 million individuals estimated to be in situations of forced labor and forced marriage—broadly referred to as “modern slavery” ( 1 ). Studies over the past two decades have increasingly documented the physical, psychological, and socioeconomic harm caused by extreme exploitation, which generally affects the world's most vulnerable adults and children ( 2 , 3 ). Yet, there is astonishingly limited evidence on “what works” to prevent these abuses or to address the consequences ( 4 ). In a recent systematic review including 90 reports on trafficking programs, the authors concluded that organizations are still “struggling to demonstrate impact and discern what works to combat human trafficking” ( 5 ). Similarly, a Rapid Evidence Review of interventions in South Asia noted that “…the outcomes from the reviewed studies alone cannot be used as recommendations for policy and practice on trafficking…” ( 6 ). These findings undoubtedly come as disheartening news to the many policy-makers and donors who seek evidence-informed avenues to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal Target 8.7, which aims to eradicate forced labor, end modern slavery and human trafficking, and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor.

Human Trafficking in Nepal, India, and Bangladesh

The Asia and the Pacific region account for over half of the ~24.9 million people in forced labor globally. India is estimated to have the largest number of persons in modern slavery globally at 8 million, compared with an estimated 592,000 in Bangladesh and 171,000 in Nepal ( 7 ). Among those in situations of forced labor, the largest prevalence, 24%, are estimated to be in domestic work ( 1 ), where exploitation by employers and labor intermediaries are common.

Awareness and Knowledge-Building Antitrafficking Interventions

Premigration community-based awareness and knowledge building activities have been particularly popular among implementing agencies and donors because they are of relatively low risk and can reach large populations at fairly low cost ( 8 ). Safe-migration interventions are generally based on the assumption that if people had better knowledge about migration-related risks and regulations and knew their rights, they could avoid trafficking-related abuses and migrate safely ( 9 ). However, to date, there is no robust evidence that premigration knowledge promotes safer migration ( 9 – 12 ). Of activities that have been assessed, to whatever extent, the vast majority of evaluations has only measured outputs (e.g., number of sessions and participants) and intermediate outcomes (e.g., immediate levels of knowledge and awareness). No evaluations have measured how increased awareness or knowledge affects individual behaviors and, in turn, how different behaviors might affect incidence or prevalence of human trafficking or modern slavery ( 13 ). Studies examining awareness-raising and knowledge-building activities, including those using experimental designs, have stopped at the point of assessing whether messages were learned by the participants vs. tracking how the new knowledge was applied or measuring how it affected migration-related safety or trafficking outcomes ( 10 , 14 , 15 ). To date, there are no data indicating modifiable factors or actionable targets to reduce “vulnerability” to trafficking. Studies attempting to identify determinants have cited primarily broad development problems, such as “low income; few economic opportunities, and instability of the local economy” ( 16 ) or ‘'poverty,” “gender,” and “age” ( 9 ). Unfortunately, these insights are not particularly helpful for anti-trafficking programming because they could relate to most ailments in low-resource settings, which development programmes have been trying to address for decades. Moreover, for intervention purposes, these broad determinants are not generally actionable within current anti-trafficking budgets or timeframes.

SWIFT Study of the Work in Freedom Program in South Asia

The South Asia Work in Freedom Transnational Evaluation (SWIFT) was a 5-year program of research and evaluation in Nepal, India, and Bangladesh of the International Labor Organisation's (ILO) Work in Freedom Programme (WIF) ( 17 ). The SWIFT evaluation was conducted independently and sought to answer the question: How do the WIF community-based prevention interventions influence women's risk of forced labor (modern slavery) in domestic work and garment sectors? SWIFT is the first evaluation to follow a large-scale, multicountry trafficking intervention, from conception to implementation, using theory-based mixed-methods approaches. The WIF program theory was based on the concept that trafficking could be prevented by predeparture community activities comprised of women's empowerment strategies, including training on the value of women's work, the costs and benefits of migration, safe and informed migration, women's rights and workers' rights and knowledge, and skills capacity building ( 18 ). Sessions in some sites also included components to improve women's ability to make informed livelihood decisions either by equipping them to migrate safely or access to local livelihood options if they did not want to migrate. This paper analyses the combined SWIFT theory-based evaluation findings across the three country intervention settings, namely, India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, and examines the intervention theory, context, mechanisms, and outcomes. WIF in India focused on internal migration, while in Nepal and Bangladesh, the target was international migration.

Theory and Methods

SWIFT applied a mixed methods theory-based approach to evaluate the theory and implementation of the WIF program. Specifically, SWIFT investigated the validity of the intervention's theory and underlying assumptions that labor trafficking could be reduced or eliminated by enhancing women's autonomy and generating adoption of safe migration practices ( Figure 1 ). SWIFT examined whether empirical evidence supported the theory that migrant women's greater awareness and knowledge would decrease their risk of exploitation and explored implementation, causal pathways, and detectable effects on knowledge transfer, uptake, and application. Findings were intended to inform future replication and scale-up.

Figure 1 . Work in Freedom (WIF) theory, assumptions, and activities evaluated using theory-based methods.

A theory-based realist evaluation design was selected because of the early stage of intervention development and the programmatic need for evidence on intervention designs and implementation. Several important considerations influenced the evaluation design. First, the space–time complexity of human trafficking demands research approaches that integrate causal thinking to capture the complex causes–effects interactions vs. methods that tend to isolate single causes of observed effects ( 19 , 20 ). Second, many core components of the intervention were still under development, and the main outcome was relatively undefined at the start of WIF implementation. Third, at the start of WIF, there was little evidence on risks and protective factors to support the hypothesized causal pathways from empowerment to protection against exploitation , which meant that focusing on effectiveness measurement would not provide useful results ( 21 ). That is, even if our evaluation indicated some level of intervention effectiveness, we would not know if it could work elsewhere ( 22 ). If the evaluation did not find positive results, we would not know whether there was a problem with the implementation or with the theory. Fourth, the intervention's feasibility, acceptability, and uptake had not been previously assessed to justify a complex and costly experimental design, making it very difficult to assess external validity. Fifth, collection of SWIFT monitoring data specifically for the evaluation was not possible due to local constraints. Consequently, we could not conduct a process-outcome evaluation, which could have allowed us to more rigorously investigate processes of change, assess quality of implementation, and identify contextual factors linked to variations in outcomes ( 23 ).

Thus, to capture the subject's complexity, the nascent stage of the intervention, and to achieve the explanatory power needed, we used a multisite mixed-methods design and adopted innovative analytical approaches, which served as strong tools for reasoning under uncertainty ( 24 ). Following realist principles, we did not expect to find a definitive answer to the question of what works to prevent human trafficking but rather aimed to investigate what mechanisms were relevant to preventing human trafficking in the intervention contexts ( 25 ). The intended “impact,” women who choose to migrate for work are “empowered and informed to find safe and decent employment,” was the ceiling of accountability 1 for the WIF program vs. “prevention of trafficking” (see Figure 1 ). Using data from the three countries, we examined constraints and enablers for the immediate training outcomes (empowerment and information) and to the ultimate intended impact (reduced trafficking).

Forced Labor Measurement

To assess prevalence and types of exploitation within our study population, we followed the ILO's guidance by assessing three dimensions of forced labor: (1) unfree recruitment, (2) work and life under duress, and (3) impossibility of leaving the employer ( 27 ). For each dimension, a range of involuntariness and penalty indicators were measured, and these were classified as medium or strong, according to the ILO guidelines. Indicators were constructed from a number of questions asked in the survey about specific individual experiences ( 28 ). Participants who reported at least one indicator of involuntariness and one penalty within a dimension, of which one was a strong indicator, were defined as having experienced that dimension of forced labor. Experience of any one of the three dimensions constitutes forced labor ( 27 ).

Study Methods for Each Study Site

In Nepal, formative research was conducted in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Labour and Mobility, Social Science Baha (CESLAM) in the district of Dolakha prior to the rollout of the community component of the WIF intervention. The formative research was conducted to provide initial prevalence figures on migration, as such data were not available. Subsequent research was conducted in three of the five WIF districts, Chitwan, Rupandehi, and Morang and included 519 returnee migrants who had previously migrated internationally for work purposes and 340 prospective migrants who planned to migrate internationally for work. Qualitative semistructured interviews were also carried out with 55 of the prospective migrant women who participated in the survey, of which six were reinterviewed following their attendance of the WiF 2-day training. Participants interviewed for the prospective migrant survey were followed up by telephone to track their migration process, including after their departure from Nepal. At the first follow-up, 188 women were reached, representing an attrition rate of 45%. Of the 188 women, one-third reported that they were no longer planning to migrate, reducing the sample size to 130. At the second follow-up, only 10 women participated, and the data were not included in further analysis.

In India, surveys were conducted in collaboration with the Centre for Women's Development Studies (CWDS) with 4,671 households, including detailed survey interviews with 1,218 women and 1,156 men in 20 probabilistically selected villages across the Ganjam District of Odisha. Among the participants, 112 women and 429 men had previously migrated ( 29 ). Pre- and posttraining questionnaires were also administered with women ( N = 347) who participated in WIF's 2-day premigration training session. To gage awareness levels, participants were asked a single question relevant to a concept and asked to answer free form in their own words, i.e., interviewers did not read out item lists. For example, to examine awareness of the benefits of migrating for work, women were asked: “What would you say are the main benefits of moving away from home to take up work somewhere else?” Enumerators could then select any of nine benefits that women could name ( 30 ). Vignettes were also used in some questions prior to eliciting women's awareness of particular concepts. Such depersonalization encouraged participants to reflect beyond their own individual circumstances, which is particularly useful when discussing sensitive topics ( 31 ).

In Bangladesh, qualitative research was carried out in collaboration with Drishti Research Centre, in three research sites in the district of Narayanganj: (i) a rural area; (ii) a former resettlement area for Dhaka slum dwellers—now an industrial district; and (iii) a densely populated semiurban area. The team conducted ethnographic observations and interviewed a cohort of 40 migrant women who participated in the WIF training and stated intentions to migrate. Women were interviewed five times between December 2015 and May 2017 ( 32 ).

In the intervention sites in Nepal and Bangladesh, most women who migrated internationally were engaged in domestic work. In the India intervention sites, most women migrated internally and the largest portion worked in construction.

Analysis for each research component was conducted and reported separately by country. In this paper, we conducted a synthesis of findings across the different studies, based on principles of realist evaluation. We consider the implications for future prevention interventions designed to inform and empower women to find safe and decent work and, in turn, avoid abuse and exploitation at destination.

Using the formative data collected in Nepal, we estimated key characteristics of migrant households and returnee migrants, including prevalence of labor migration, and findings on remittances, mobile phone use, common work sectors, and reported injuries ( 33 ). In the other three sites, we examined migration planning among prospective Nepali migrant women by comparing first-time and repeat migration using logistic regressions controlling for district, time until proposed departure, and age. Further methodological detail is available elsewhere ( 34 ).

To analyze past labor experiences and remigration intentions among Nepali returnee women, we examined their remigration intentions against their experiences (or not) of forced labor during their most recent migration. We used Bayesian networks to model the Nepal returnee dataset to examine causal interactions between variables and make predictions about the effect of potential interventions. We used multivariate logistic regression to examine the association between forced labor experience and speaking the destination's language among women who migrated to Arabic-speaking countries. The model was adjusted for destination country and work sector, based on the conceptual framework and findings published in the article by Kiss et al. ( 20 ).

Thematic analysis was used to analyze semistructured interviews in Nepal, and discourse and thematic analysis were used to analyze interviews in Bangladesh ( 32 , 35 ).

Descriptive analysis was used to describe the context of WIF's implementation in Odisha. We calculated the number of migrant households, prevalence of migration, predeparture indicators, working conditions, and prevalence of forced labor among migrants by gender. To analyze the pre- and posttraining data, we used descriptive analysis and unadjusted analyses (paired t -tests, McNemar's tests, Wilcoxon signed ranks tests) to estimate the differences in scores before and after predeparture awareness training. Adjusted analyses used mixed effects models to explore whether receiving information on workers' rights or working away from home prior to the training was associated with changes in before-and-after scores. Further information on analysis is available elsewhere ( 30 ).

We report overall findings using the Context–Mechanism–Outcome framework in realist evaluation ( 36 ). We first describe findings by Mechanisms of WIF, followed by the interventions Outcomes, before describing how context affected both mechanisms and outcomes in the Context section. We first describe findings on the intervention's mechanism rather than initially focusing on the context to reflect the way in which WIF was conceived and presented to stakeholders, in 2013. WIF's design relied on the scarce body of evidence that the field had accumulated at that time, in addition to inputs from researchers and practitioners in the field. These inputs were used to determine the mechanisms that were deemed effective to prevent trafficking (the intervention's intended impact). Contextual variables were not part of these initial discussions and were also absent in the first iterations of the program's theory of change and log frame. The basic assumption that guided the development of WIF's community-based component was that women's empowerment would lead to reduced incidence of trafficking.

Mechanisms of WIF

This section describes the main characteristics or mechanisms of the WIF intervention, i.e., what it was about the WIF interventions that brought about any effects in empowerment and information outcomes, and on the incidence of human trafficking in each intervention context. WIF's proposed mechanism was that predeparture training, targeting prospective migrants, would empower women, make them aware of their migration circumstances, thus changing their migration behavior, and ultimately protect them from human trafficking. We describe below the results from our research that relate to WIF's mechanisms, based on Dalkin et al. ( 37 ) conceptualization of mechanisms in realist evaluations ( 37 ). That is, we examine the mechanisms both as the resources offered by the intervention and the ways in which these resources change the reasoning of participants.

Intervention Content

In each country, the training was designed as premigration decision-making or premigration preparation sessions for prospective migrants, which aimed to help participants consider local employment opportunities, the pros and cons of migration, practical migration preparation, common problems encountered during migration, and emergency contacts. In Nepal, prospective migrants who completed the survey were followed by phone over time to track their migration planning and process. At the first follow-up interview, 50% of those reached reported having attended the WIF training ( n = 94/188) and noted that the most important information they received was related to the documents required to migrate (62%) and legal travel routes (40%) ( 38 ). In India, while the training was well-received, with 95% of participants reporting that they learned information about migrating safely that they did not know before, assessments of participant learning indicated that all knowledge domains covered by the training remained low after the training (see Outcomes below) ( 30 ). In Bangladesh, although some women appreciated the content of the training, they often did not think the guidance was relevant to their lives, and some found certain information to be incorrect. As noted by one participant in Bangladesh who was informed of local livelihood options that did not materialize: “We can now tell anyone who wants to hear, that all these beautiful words about getting a loan are pure lies” ( 32 ).

There were also misperceptions about a “hotline” at destination in case of emergencies, which, for some, had serious implications, as in the case of one Bangladeshi woman who had migrated to a Gulf State:

Eleven days after arrival, a distressed Shikha [alias] called her husband and her mother and asks to be repatriated, who contacted the NGO fieldworker. She recommends that they let the phone keep ringing because Shikha is acting childishly and is not taking sufficient time to adjust. Shikha also calls the NGO helpline from the employer's home. The NGO social worker does not seem to understand the sexual abuse that Shikha cannot reveal ( 32 ).

While there was a “hotline” as promised, the support workers' ability to respond was not sufficient to meet this woman's actual needs. Similarly, in Nepal, women attending the training felt safer to migrate after having heard about contact details of the implementing partners because they believed they would be rescued if needed ( 39 ).

Target Participants

Participants for whom WIF intervention content was largely irrelevant were recruited across sites, which likely affected retention and interest in program messages. The WIF intervention's target participants were identified and recruited by local organizations commissioned by the WIF program. For example, in Nepal, peer educators conducted house-to-house visits to identify women interested in migrating, who would then be invited to the 2-day WIF training. This broad targeting approach, which treated all women of working age as potential migrants, was deliberate due to the stigma associated with women's labor migration and the need to achieve a maximum number of participants to meet donor obligations. Unsurprisingly, findings from Nepal suggest that many who were identified as “prospective migrants” did not actually have any clear plans to migrate but rather a loose idea of considering migration if the opportunity arises. Among the 188 women interviewed during follow-up surveys, only one-third ( n = 58) stated that they still intended to migrate, while 15% ( n = 27) had arrived at their destination. This somewhat loose participant selection process inevitably raised questions about the extent to which the participants were appropriately targeted and selected, which may also have had the knock-on effect of lowering women's uptake of the training information. Among 347 training participants in India, just 10.4% had thoughts of moving away from their village before the training, which also reflected low female outmigration patterns in which only 7% of households had a female migrant ( 30 ). As with Nepal participants, the low proportion of training participants considering migration likely indicates poor participant identification. Poor intervention targeting was also reflected by the low numbers of women who actually migrated for domestic work in the India study site (vs. construction and agriculture, which were not WIF's focused sectors).

Participants also seemed to have mixed motives for agreeing to attend the training sessions. For instance, several participants in Bangladesh indicated that they joined primarily for the free meal. Numerous participants also had misguided expectations of the “premigration training,” explaining that they thought the training would provide them direct assistance to migrate. As a Bangladeshi participant noted: “I went to the [NGO] training hoping I would get a visa and they would help me to migrate but got nothing… [the NGO] needed us… Now they are finished with us.” As she indicated, some perceived that their participation was more beneficial to the program than to themselves ( 32 ).

Implementation

Each 2-day training program was implemented on a specific date and time, which may have meant that participants were receiving the information too far in advance of their possible travel to retain the knowledge when they needed it. In Nepal and India, the training sessions focused on helping women decide whether or not to migrate, which meant some would only be deciding to migrate after the training. As noted by one Bangladeshi participant: “I liked everything about the training. The way the sister talked, the food…. But if you ask me what was said I could not tell you. I forgot most of it.” The migration planning process can happen very quickly or extend over a year or more, suggesting that “one-off” interventions may not meet actual needs as well as ongoing services and guidance. In India, training was very well-received, with 98.8% stating that they could follow along and understand the information given and 94.1% reporting that they would recommend the training to other women, but at the same time, there were extraordinarily low levels of actual learning (see Outcomes below).

Observations about implementation also raised questions about whether the sessions were delivered by the right trainers. In a number of the sites, the training sessions were led by women who were of a higher socioeconomic class than the participants and who rarely if ever had their own migration experience. This social class difference may have led to participants' reluctance to accept some of the messages because of the messenger—especially messages pertaining to rights and empowerment. As one participant in Bangladesh explained: “I liked what they said about rights. There is nothing wrong with these beautiful words. But this kind of talk is not for us. It is good for educated people like you [pointing to the researcher]. What do we do with these nice words? We cannot implement them.” In Nepal, the training sessions were conducted by a peer educator from the implementing partner, alongside a social mobilizer who may or may not have had migration experience. In India, training sessions were conducted by implementing NGO's staff, and it was unclear whether any had migration experience.

Outcomes of WIF

WIF's intended outcome was “Women are empowered to make informed migration decisions and an enabling environment is created for their safe migration into decent work.” The program's theory relied on the premise that this outcome would lead to the intended impact of “reduced incidence of trafficking of women and girls within and from India, Bangladesh and Nepal into domestic and garment sectors, through economic, social and legal empowerment.” This section describes the outcomes of the WIF premigration sessions for women, specifically addressing women's understanding and ability to acquire and apply a greater sense of empowerment and information to find safe and decent work when migrating .

Uptake of Empowerment and Rights Attitudes

The WIF training sessions sought to improve women's perception of the value of their work and their rights, both inside and out of the home. Among the 94 women in Nepal that attended the training, most appreciated messages about their rights, but only 2% indicated that the most important knowledge they gained was about the “rights of migrant workers” (of 20 items) ( 39 ). Low interest in worker rights may have been due, in part, to the fact that most women did not yet know the destination to which they would be migrating—or if they would be migrating at all. Actually, one in two Nepali women planning to migrate in the next 3 months knew nothing about contract details, including salary, living situation, hours, time off, contract length, or penalty for leaving early.

Interviews with women who had previously migrated indicated that migration itself conferred a sense of empowerment. Many Nepali women described feeling empowered via earning their own income, deciding how to spend their money, and their wider knowledge of the world from going abroad. Conversely, findings also suggest that the association of women's migration with promiscuity was stigmatizing for some returnee women who described being gossiped about when they returned ( 40 ). Moreover, in settings such as Nepal, where women's labor migration is a relatively recent phenomena, women who challenge traditional gender roles are frequently stigmatized, and these concerns were not addressed by the WIF intervention.

The erroneous assumptions hindered outcomes on empowerment. In India, women's attitudes toward women's work remained relatively fixed even after the training. For example, when asked about the statement, “Woman's work is not as important as men's work,” before the training, 47.3% agreed, which only changed to 44.9% afterwards. Attitudes toward domestic work also remained broadly negative, with 43.6% of participants agreeing that “Sita should feel ashamed to do paid domestic work in someone else's home,” before the training compared with 46.7% after. Despite these findings, small positive changes were observed for respect and rights. For example, before the training, 47.3% agreed that “Paid domestic workers have the same rights as all workers,” which increased to 59.9% after. After the training, a majority reported they learned about women's rights (85.6%) and workers' rights (84.9%), but these changes were not reflected in their reported attitudes about these concepts ( 30 ).

Uptake of Migration-Related Learning

Outcomes on migration-related learning were also relatively low. In India, women's pre- and post-knowledge of migration risks and opportunities was assessed using single questions connected to a migration-learning construct, such as, “What would you say are the main risks in moving away from home to take up work somewhere else?” Before the training, participants could cite an average of 1.2 risks (of 13) compared to 2.1 risks after the training. Similarly, low learning scores were observed for virtually all topics included in the training, indicating very low to zero retention of training messages ( 30 ).

In qualitative interviews in Bangladesh, women's perceptions of risk following the training did not reflect WIF messages. For example, advice from the WIF training to migrate without a dalal (informal labor intermediary) was strongly rejected ( 32 ). Women believed it was necessary to use a dalal to migrate. While women recognized numerous risks related to migration, many believed that outcomes were due to chance, and some believed that spiritual practices would protect them. Participating in WIF training was interpreted by some women as a kind of “certificate,” which lent them a special advantage that would reduce their risks during migration ( 32 ). However, at the same time, women did not often follow the advice they received in the training (e.g., travel via formal routes and agencies). In qualitative interviews in Nepal, one woman reported that she learned she should obtain necessary migration documents and travel via safe routes. Nevertheless, she traveled through an irregular channel following the advice of her broker and discussions with her husband. These types of decisions suggest that WIF messages may be constrained by individual and contextual realities, spiritual or superstitious beliefs, and structural forces.

Reduction in the Incidence of Human Trafficking

Findings from Nepal indicate the premise that women's empowerment and awareness prevents human trafficking is misguided in that context. Instead, our results indicate that the most important risk associated with forced labor is their country of destination, which is determined by the labor recruiter. Women's individual characteristics, awareness, and participation in trainings did not affect their likelihood of unfree recruitment, work and life under duress, or impossibility of leaving their employer (the three dimensions of forced labor, as defined by the ILO) ( 20 ). Data from Bangladesh suggest that this might also have been the case in that context, where qualitative accounts of posttraining migration show the difficulties women had in implementing WIF's empowerment strategies, as described above.

This section analyses WIF's outcomes in the context of the underpinning theory and assumptions. The contextual conditions needed for the intervention mechanisms to be activated ( 41 ) were not theorized previous to WIF's implementation. The results presented in this section describe how these contextual conditions interacted with WIF's theory.

Formal vs. Informal Recruitment Agents in Migration

A core assumption in the WIF theory of change was that migrant women should and could use formally registered recruitment agents (vs. informal brokers). Therefore, a central WIF program message discouraged the use of informal brokers in favor of registered agents and included guidance about how women could secure the required travel documents, negotiate formal work contracts, and travel via legal migration channels. Our findings indicate that, in reality, many, if not most, of the women planning international migration have to engage with informal agents at some point in their journey ( 42 ), especially women who came from rural areas where there are few or no registered agents. Rural women in Bangladesh had greater trust in local recruiters because they had the impression that recruiters would be accountable in some way if something went wrong—even if plans would eventually involve registered agencies ( 43 ). In India, women migrated almost exclusively within India. Only 13.9% of migrant women relied on a broker. The vast majority of women's migration was facilitated by their friends or acquaintances without participation of a labor contractor (72.2%). Among those who used brokers, deception was commonly reported: “I had no idea to find out my whereabouts. The person (broker) was maintaining tight secrecy for which we were in doubt. We started querying to the broker regarding our work settlement. I was not in a favor of working in anybody's house. The broker had told us to wait till the next morning. But, he had cheated us.”

The Influence of Rights and Empowerment Messages Amidst Local Gender Norms and Socioeconomic Power Dynamics

A further assumption in the WIF theory of change was that empowerment training could lead women to exert their rights as women and as workers. However, one influential barrier hindering this behavior change may have been women's very low confidence in their own ability to assert their power in their communities or within their families—particularly in the face of the pervasive gender inequalities, especially the cultural norms related to female migration. In India, over half of the returnee female migrants (53.5% of n = 112) reported they had limited input in the decision concerning their migration. In Bangladesh, women explained that they would have great difficulty expressing the empowerment messages they heard in the training. Exercising their rights became even more problematic when women needed to negotiate with labor brokers and nearly impossible with employers once they arrived in the destination, not least because work conditions are rarely negotiable and rights related to foreign workers are not enforced even if they exist on paper, particularly for domestic workers ( 44 ). In other words, knowing about their rights could not protect women if the context did not provide space to assert those rights. It is not a coincidence that forced labor among Nepali female returnees was higher in countries with the kafala system at the time of the study, which gave employers full state-sanctioned rights over migrant workers, including their visas ( 45 ).

In addition, while the WIF intervention tried to normalize migration for the WIF participants, female migration in South Asia is still highly stigmatized because of its association with sex work or promiscuity ( 40 ). Nearly half of female returnees in India (48.6% of n = 112) reported suffering stigma when they returned home. In this sense, in women's own community, WIF's messages were hampered by the social reality of women's lives, where entrenched social norms and accepted power structures pose substantial barriers along the WIF-anticipated pathways toward empowerment, particularly when empowerment is specifically related to migration.

A further underlying, albeit more distal, assumption was that if women could be equipped with correct knowledge about migration and assert their knowledge with recruiters (e.g., contracts, rights, migration regulations), this could influence recruiters to change their behavior. That is, if women knew how to negotiate their contracts and understood the laws and their rights and necessary documentation, recruiters would have to treat them differently, i.e., could not exploit them. Yet to date, there is little to no evidence from our study or elsewhere indicating that intermediaries alter their practices—exploitative or not—if women are more knowledgeable about the migration processes. Conversely, our study showed that having contracts did not protect Nepali migrant women from forced labor at destination ( 20 ).

Risk Awareness Among Target Populations vs. Risk Tolerance

Another underlying WIF assumption was that being aware of the risks of forced labor can make one safer from exploitation—an assumption that has underpinned many trafficking prevention activities around the world ( 6 ). Yet, findings from our research and other studies indicate that most prospective migrants are actually aware of migration-related risks. Nevertheless, individuals frequently maintain fervent hopes that migration will work out for them personally , or are willing to take their chances, even if they believe there are risks for other people ( 10 , 46 ). Among SWIFT participants in Nepal, just over two-thirds (67.8%) of returnee migrant women reported having been aware that migrants may be deceived about their working terms and conditions prior to migrating. Most reported (91.2%) having suffered forced labor. Additionally, data from the Nepal survey with returnees and prospective migrants suggest that past experiences of forced labor are also not related to whether or not a respondent decides to return to the same destination or sector in which they were previously exploited. There does not even seem to be a “dose response effect,” as participation in trainings did not reduce the likelihood of experiencing forced labor—even among those women who had a work contract, which was suggested to be protective according to the WIF training ( 20 ).

Language Capability and Exploitation

Local language skills can influence women's negotiating power, but this was not a strong component in the trainings. For example, even for interstate migration in India, language barriers can affect their engagement at destination. As one study participant in India explained: “In Kerala, I could not understand their language. They too do not understand our language, I suppose. I felt like, I was mum almost all the time. There was only work, all the time. We could not take rest for a while during the duty hours. This is so exhausting. I feel very tired there. On the top of this, there is hardly any chance of social interaction. Sometimes, I feel like damning those people there” ( 29 ).

Among Nepali returnees who had migrated to Arabic-speaking countries, almost three in four (73.6%) reported that they could speak some Arabic. The assumption that they would be able to negotiate their contracts or working conditions in Arabic seems, however, farfetched. Results from regression analysis suggest that the prevalence of forced labor among returnees was not associated with speaking the language [crude odds ratio (OR), 0.75; 95% CI, 0.74: 4.0; AOR, 1.1; 95% CI, 0.41: 2.8]. Actually, the prevalence of forced labor was slightly higher among women who could speak the language (95.7%; 95% CI, 93.0: 97.6) vs. women who did not speak the language (92.8%; 95% CI, 86.8: 96.7).

Learning Uptake Among Participants

An important assumption in the WIF design was that the invited participants would be interested in, engage with, and take up the learning offered in the WIF curriculum. Yet, findings cast doubt on the learning uptake by participants. Although the vast majority of WIF training participants in Odisha reported previous training on worker's rights or labor migration, WIF participants' initial knowledge scores about migration risks, practices, rights, and collective bargaining were very limited, and their scores remained low even after the 2-day training, as noted above ( 30 ). Low learning levels might be explained by low prevalence of female migration (7% of households) in the site that ILO selected for the training and evaluation, which likely hindered participant interest and uptake of migration-related information. This finding was similar to the prevalence of female migration in the formative research site in Dolakha, Nepal (2%). As a result of the formative research, this site was dropped from the evaluation. Another possible reason for low learning uptake In India might have been the substantial training focus on domestic work when the larger portion of female migrants worked in construction (25.2%) vs. paid domestic work (19.1%). Moreover, women in India may not have been interested in the exploitation and trafficking messages offered in the training because of the generally low levels of reported forced labor (4%), especially when compared with Nepal (91.2%). At the same time, however, Indian women who had migrated within India working in non-domestic work sectors reported fairly poor work conditions, with 53% indicating that they worked in a dusty, smoky, fume-filled space without adequate ventilation; 50% did tasks that could hurt them or cause illness or sickness; and 37% were in uncomfortable or painful positions for long periods ( 47 ). Yet, occupational risks and protections were not part of the WIF training curriculum. Furthermore, in qualitative interviews, migrants in India reported non-payment of wages, reduced wages, or delayed payments, as well as restrictions in freedom, violence, and abuse by employers. One interviewee reported her experience: “In Kerala, the sister's (female employer) husband misbehaved with me. So at that time I was frightened. And I wanted to go home. About this matter I couldn't speak to anyone, because language was a big problem. Toward the end of my 5 years stay, I deliberately became more uncooperative…. The unpleasant experience of sexual assault by that old man in Kerala has indeed left a lifetime scar on me. I used to spread a mat under the bed of a room and sleep there with fear like a dog.” Despite regular evidence from this study and others, abuse, especially sexual abuse, was not integrated into the curriculum.

Intervention-focused evaluation on human trafficking, forced labor, extreme exploitation—or “modern slavery” —is a relatively nascent field of study. As human trafficking is an emerging area for interventions, it is not surprising that findings on trafficking prevention currently suggest more weaknesses than strengths in the WIF intervention theory, assumptions, mechanisms, and outcomes. Moving forward toward more effective and cost-effective programming, results from this evaluation offer crucial insights about future antitrafficking prevention programming that relies on premigration training. Our findings add to the growing body of evidence on the ineffectiveness of premigration knowledge building as an antitrafficking strategy ( 10 , 15 ). Furthermore, this evaluation highlights the importance of understanding the full context in which interventions are intended to have an effect, not solely the site where the intervention is delivered. This study also has implications for future methodological approaches to intervention development and evaluation.

First and foremost, when addressing modern slavery, and even when considering “everyday exploitation,” there is no denying that the dynamics in each context play the most significant role. The asymmetric power relationship between workers and others involved in their recruitment and employment will continue to hinder mechanisms such as premigration training from achieving the outcome of making women safer because it relies on women to be able to apply these rights and information. In other words, while the WIF intervention's messages about women's rights as women and their rights as workers are undeniably inherently beneficial, it nonetheless remained unreasonable for women to believe in these rights and even more difficult for them to assert them in settings in which these rights are rarely, if ever, respected ( 48 ). Exerting these rights is especially difficult in countries where employment contracts bind employees to employers through migration sponsorship programs, such as the Kafala system in the Gulf countries. Evidence from our research and many other studies show that migrants face increased risks of exploitation, violence, and reduced access to justice under this system ( 20 , 48 – 50 ).

This context of often-extreme power imbalances suggests that it may be problematic to invest in premigration interventions alone, as these single location initiatives do not take sufficient account of the full migration trajectory, especially the later stages toward the destination and workplace, where the power asymmetry widens and most of the abuses occur. Because women themselves are not able to confront the entrenched and unequal power dynamics with recruiters or employers, interventions must be designed to address multiple points in a woman's migration trajectory. Figure 2 highlights how power asymmetries grow over the course of migration, which will limit the potential effectiveness of interventions that solely aim to arm women with knowledge before they migrate without addressing the increasing power differentials women encounter throughout their migration journey. The WIF community-based intervention's theoretical assumption, that if women were equipped with the migration-related knowledge, awareness of their rights and a budding sense of empowerment, they could manage the forthcoming negotiations, was not credible in the face of the severe inequalities related to gender, socioeconomic status, and migrant discrimination, particularly the state-sanctioned inequalities in destination locations. While there have been international legislative achievements that should influence local laws, such as the adoption of the International Labor Organization's Domestic Workers Convention 189 ( 51 ); to date, there have been only 29 ratifications, few of which include common destination locations for migrant domestic workers and no Gulf states. Moreover, while these tools lay the essential scaffolding for future improvements, there is little evidence of their earnest implementation and even less evidence that women workers experience any enforcement or benefit from regulatory provisions. These intervention challenges were also noted in the 2020 report by the United Kingdom's Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI), “It also makes little sense to address international trafficking and forced migration in source countries without also taking necessary action in destination countries and along migration pathways” ( 52 ). Unfortunately, the original Work in Freedom programmatic theory of change for the community-based activities relied on assumptions about the potential for individual empowerment and awareness raising to translate into reduction in vulnerability when migrating. However, WIF did engage local implementing partners that worked closely with migrant populations or had expertise with gender issues.

Figure 2 . Migration intervention trajectory and increasing power asymmetries.

While WIF recruited a broad range of participants, many anti-trafficking programmes target participants based on poverty, sex and education status as supposed “risk factors”, which are non-modifiable characteristics that generally fall beyond the scope of anti-trafficking programming. Findings from our work suggest that identifying at-risk groups based on these individual indicators is likely to be misleading at best and wasteful at worst. Moreover, this study indicates that individual situations have to be carefully considered in the gendered and socioeconomic context to avoid assumptions about the promise of empowerment against exploitation. That is, programs to prevent labor exploitation among international migrants need to address more than just the predeparture characteristics of prospective migrant women but must consider interventions that shift the power imbalances for migrant workers in relation to larger structural determinants, particularly recruitment processes and the employment context at the end of the migration trajectory. Targeting modifiable determinants of a migrant's experiences, for example, recruiter behaviors, which fall further up the structural pathway, may yield better results (see Figure 2 ).

Furthermore, the political context of interventions matters. Definitions of trafficking and forced labor are highly contentious, and governments of both origin and destination locations often dispute the use of these constructs and measurements to describe the situation of their citizens or their foreign workers. During the course of our evaluation, there was some resistance to the subject of forced labor and human trafficking. Moreover, the release of prevalence measurements of trafficking and forced labor was seen as particularly sensitive to governments and the international organizations operating in these sites. In particular, international agencies were concerned about the potential negative implications of the numbers of migrants being exploited and feared that the findings would cause government to (re)instate the female labor migration bans ( 53 ).

From a realist evaluation perspective ( 21 ), WIF lacked some clear initial theorizing about what were potentially successful pathways to influence change in deeply constrained migration trajectories. Moreover, having the programmatic ceiling of accountability fixed on women's empowerment and awareness meant that the actual effectiveness of the program was left mostly unchecked throughout implementation, with only the emerging findings from SWIFT, especially the qualitative component in Bangladesh, able to reveal some of the unintended and often harmful outcomes. Comprehensive monitoring systems that inform a program's adaptation would have been necessary to ensure prevention of harm via early detection of unintended outcomes.

Limitations

Methods for data collection and analysis were not the same across sites. In each setting, we prioritized robust methodological approaches that were complementary and could address our main evaluation question, i.e., to what extent the rationale and assumptions of WIF were supported by context-specific evidence, and what were main enablers and barriers to implementation. We relied on the knowledge and experience of our local partners to ensure that we implemented feasible, acceptable, and ethical methodological approaches for research in each site. Triangulation across sites showed many similarities in findings, even considering the different methods used for data collection. This consistency in findings provided strong indications of the strength of the evidence produced by SWIFT on WIF's theory and implementation.

Of the four cross-sectional surveys we conducted, two relied on representative population samples. Unfortunately, both were conducted in WIF intervention sites with very low prevalence of female migration (Dolakha in Nepal, and Odisha in India). These sites were initially selected by the ILO to be the focus of the SWIFT evaluation, but Dolakha was ultimately removed for Nepal. The surveys with prospective and returnee migrants in three other Nepal districts relied on WIF's strategy for identification of their target population. This strategy aimed to avoid underreporting of migration experiences and aspiration by relying on identification of migrant women by peer educators hired by the ILO's local partners that operated in the specific districts. This population cannot, therefore, be considered representative of the overall population of female migrants living in the evaluation sites. We can, however, safely assume that they represent WIF's target population, since these were the women who were invited to participate in WIF's activities.

Loss to follow-up was very high in longitudinal data collection in India and Nepal, especially after women left home. We put in place several strategies to reduce attrition, but we were not able to conduct many interviews after women reached their destination. Findings on outcomes, in particular (especially quantitative data), were limited by the ethical and logistical challenges to follow women throughout their migration journeys, especially women in exploitative, abusive, or unfree work conditions. In Nepal, follow-up was particularly challenging, partly due to the 2015 earthquake that occurred at the end of the fieldwork. In the aftermath of the earthquake, women's contact details and migration plans may have changed, which may explain in part why there was such a large number lost to follow-up. Details of limitations in each of the individual studies are available elsewhere ( 20 , 28 , 30 , 34 , 35 ).

We acknowledge that the WIF intervention involved more than the community-level activities and also worked with governments, trade unions, employers, and others. These other components may have had positive effects, but our remit with SWIFT was to evaluate only the community-level activities.

This theory-based evaluation strongly indicates that the community-based component of the WIF intervention was not sufficiently researched or well-designed to prevent the exploitation of migrant women. This evaluation also contributes further evidence against premigration knowledge-building and awareness-raising because they are extremely unlikely to sufficiently equip migrants to overcome the power inequalities that they will encounter throughout the migration journey, especially once they are in their employment situation. While these findings are disappointing, they are nonetheless crucial for the field of human trafficking prevention precisely because the results demonstrated that the intervention did not work. There is growing recognition of the necessity to publish null findings of rigorously produced evidence for interventions that do not do what was intended and offer explanations for apparent failure. Scientists reporting weak or null findings are arguably among the most valuable soothsayers in policy or programming realms because of their ability to explain what should be done differently or more effectively in the future, to avoid the waste of precious funds ( 54 ). While our research did not indicate that the intervention was effective in reducing women's risk of exploitation, the results most certainly emphasized that women who decide to migrate for work need and deserve better migration policy protections and effective interventions, so they can be safe when they strive for better livelihoods for themselves and their family.

Data Availability Statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Ethics approvals were obtained from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) (reference numbers 8840, 7021, and 8895), the Centre for Women's Development Studies, Indian Council of Social Science Research for India, the Nepal Health Research Council (reference numbers 1040 and 1441) and the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling, an autonomous research institute in Bangladesh. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author Contributions

CZ and LK: conceptualization, funding acquisition, supervision, and writing—original draft. LK, JM, and NP: data curation and formal analysis. CZ, LK, JM, and NP: investigation, methodology, and writing—review & editing. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This evaluation was funded by the Foreign & Commonwealth Development Office (previously known as the Department for International Development), Grant No. GB-1-203857-102, awarded to LK and CZ at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The funders did not play a role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Funding URL: https://devtracker.fcdo.gov.uk/projects/GB-1-203857 .

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the many female and male participants who agreed to participate in the study. We thank Samantha Watson for her role in designing and implementing the study, Christine McLanachan for overall study leadership and coordination, and partners at AAINA, SEWA , and the Centre for Women's Development Studies in India, the DRISHTI Research Centre in Bangladesh, and Centre for the Study of Labour and Mobility at Social Sciences Baha in Nepal. We thank Tanya Abramsky at LSHTM for her role in analyses for Nepal. We are grateful to the FCDO colleagues for their consistent support throughout the evaluation.

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Keywords: human trafficking, modern slavery, migrant women, realist evaluation, South Asia

Citation: Zimmerman C, Mak J, Pocock NS and Kiss L (2021) Human Trafficking: Results of a 5-Year Theory-Based Evaluation of Interventions to Prevent Trafficking of Women From South Asia. Front. Public Health 9:645059. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.645059

Received: 22 December 2020; Accepted: 23 March 2021; Published: 17 May 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Zimmerman, Mak, Pocock and Kiss. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Cathy Zimmerman, cathy.zimmerman@lshtm.ac.uk ; Nicola S. Pocock, nicola.pocock@lshtm.ac.uk

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Women Trafficking in Bangladesh: Responses to Combat Trafficking with Reference of the Human Trafficking Deterrence and Suppression Act, 2012

Rahman, K. F. (2013). Women Trafficking in Bangladesh: Responses to Combat Trafficking with Reference of the Human Trafficking Deterrence and Suppression Act, 2012. Jagannath University Journal of Law, 1(1), 165–180.

24 Pages Posted: 15 Oct 2021

Faculty of Social Sciences; Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Dhaka

Date Written: 2013

Trafficking of women is a growing tension at national and international level. Millions of women in every year are illegally trafficked to the other countries for prostitution, forced labour and other immoral activities. Bangladesh is considered as a popular source in South Asia from which women are trafficked to India and other Gulf countries. Most women trafficked from Bangladesh are because of poverty, social exclusion, unstable family situation and so on. The act of trafficking afterwards can have very serious consequences for the victim and society. Trafficking has a profound impact particularly on the health and well-being of women. They in addition have often been declined by their families after their rescue and the mental anguish can lead to self-mutilation and/or suicide. There have been calls from international and national organizations toward government of Bangladesh to take initiatives to combat against trafficking and rehabilitate victims after rescue. In line with that, Bangladesh has legislated The Human Trafficking Deterrence and Suppression Act, 2012 to prosecute perpetrators by different terms of punishment including death sentences and prevent trafficking through return and rehabilitating victims, mobilizing resources for fund to prevent trafficking, allowing the victim to access legal aid and right to compensation for instances. The article in this context aims to identify the trends of women trafficking in Bangladesh with its consequence upon the victim and society. Later it also concentrates on international and legal framework to combat women trafficking with a special attention on The Human Trafficking Deterrence and Suppression Act, 2012.

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

KF Rahman (Contact Author)

Faculty of social sciences, university of dhaka ( email ).

Shahbagh Dhaka, 1000 Bangladesh 1000 (Fax)

Faculty of Social Sciences

Level 7 Social Sciences Building Dhaka, Dhaka 1000 Bangladesh

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2021 Trafficking in Persons Report: Bangladesh

• BANGLADESH: Tier 2

The Government of Bangladesh does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so. The government demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared to the previous reporting period, considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its anti-trafficking capacity; therefore Bangladesh remained on Tier 2. These efforts included initiating more prosecutions, particularly of labor traffickers; beginning to operate its trafficking tribunals; and collaborating with foreign governments on a transnational trafficking case. The government also opened an investigation into—and Parliament revoked the seat of—a member of Parliament involved in bribing a Kuwaiti official to fraudulently send more than 20,000 Bangladeshi migrant workers to Kuwait. The government also reported it funded 95 percent of its national action plan to fight human trafficking. However, the government did not meet the minimum standards in several key areas. The number of convictions decreased, while law enforcement continued to deny credible reports of official complicity in trafficking, forced labor 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 organizations identified signs of trafficking in hundreds of migrant workers returning from Vietnam, the government, instead of screening them for trafficking indicators, arrested them on vague charges, including for damaging the country’s image. The government continued to allow recruiting agencies to charge high recruitment fees to migrant workers and did not consistently address illegally operating recruitment sub-agents, leaving workers vulnerable to traffickers. Victim care remained insufficient. Officials did not consistently implement victim identification procedures or refer identified victims to care, and the government did not have shelters or adequate services for adult male victims.

• PRIORITIZED RECOMMENDATIONS:

Increase prosecutions and convictions for trafficking offenses, particularly of labor traffickers and complicit government officials, while respecting due process. • Take steps to eliminate recruitment fees charged to workers by licensed labor recruiters and ensure employers pay recruitment fees. • Increase investigations and prosecutions of credible allegations of trafficking of Rohingya, including cases that do not involve movement. • Disseminate and implement standard guidelines for provision of adequate victim care referral to protective services. • Expand services for trafficking victims, especially adult male victims, foreign victims, and victims exploited abroad. • Allow NGOs to provide services to trafficking victims in government shelters without a court order. • Cease requiring adult trafficking victims to obtain a family member’s consent before leaving government shelters. • Continue collaboration with the Inter-Sector Coordination Group to implement measures protecting Rohingya from traffickers. • Enhance training for officials, including law enforcement, labor inspectors, immigration officers, and health care providers on identification of trafficking cases and victim referrals to services. • Fully implement and monitor for compliance the registration requirements for recruitment agents and dalals. • Improve quality of pre-departure trainings for migrant workers, including sessions on labor rights, labor laws, and access to justice and overseas assistance. • Establish clear procedures for Rohingya to file complaints in the legal system, and train law enforcement and camp management on the procedures. • Improve collaboration with NGOs and civil society for more effective partnership on anti-trafficking efforts, specifically through allowing service providers increased access to assist victims. • Finalize, adopt, and implement revisions to the 2015 MOU with India to streamline the identification and repatriation of Bangladeshi trafficking victims. • Fully implement the 2018-2022 National Plan of Action, including dedicating official resources towards enhancing victim care. • Establish standard guidelines for investigating transnational trafficking cases.

• PROSECUTION

The government maintained overall law enforcement efforts. The government prosecuted more traffickers for forced labor, expanded cooperation on transnational trafficking crimes, and revoked the seat of a member of parliament following his conviction abroad for trafficking crimes, but it convicted fewer traffickers and did not take adequate steps to address internal sex trafficking or official complicity in general, both of which remained pervasive. The 2012 Prevention and Suppression of Human Trafficking Act (PSHTA) criminalized sex trafficking and labor trafficking and prescribed penalties of five years to life imprisonment and a fine of not less than 50,000 Bangladeshi Taka (BDT) ($588). Bonded labor was treated as a separate offense with lesser prescribed penalties of five to 12 years’ imprisonment and a fine of not less than 50,000 BDT ($588). These penalties were sufficiently stringent and, with regard to sex trafficking, commensurate with those prescribed for other serious crimes, such as kidnapping. The government continued to train police officers through an anti-trafficking module at the police academy. The government also continued to train and provide in-kind support to international organization and NGO-run trainings for judicial, immigration, and border officials. The government did not report whether police and other relevant officials received training on the 2017 PSHTA implementing rules.

The government investigated 348 cases under the PSHTA (including 138 investigations continued from previous years), compared with the investigation of 403 cases (including 29 ongoing investigations) during the previous reporting period. The government prosecuted 517 suspects (184 for sex trafficking and 333 for forced labor)—an increase from the 312 individuals the government prosecuted the previous reporting period, of which 56 were for forced labor. The government convicted seven traffickers, including one for sex trafficking, two for labor trafficking, and four for undefined trafficking crimes, but acquitted 14 defendants. This was a significant decrease from courts convicting 25 traffickers the previous reporting year. Due to the pandemic, courts were closed from April to July 2020 and in-person activities were delayed until August. In addition to delaying trials, the pandemic forced postponement of the orientation and training for new anti-human trafficking tribunal judges and prosecutors who had been appointed in March 2020. The government reported more than 4,000 trafficking cases remained pending investigation or prosecution as of December 2020. The government acknowledged investigations, prosecutions, and convictions for trafficking remained inadequate compared to the scale of the problem.

In previous reporting periods, the majority of cases involved migrant smuggling of Rohingya and Bangladeshis without clear indicators of crimes of trafficking in persons; the government did not report case details of this year’s investigations or prosecutions. Some officials did not understand human trafficking and at times conflated it with migrant smuggling. Some officials continued to deny the existence of internal trafficking, especially child sex trafficking, despite observers recording multiple cases of child sex trafficking in licensed brothels each month. Police and prosecutors did not collaborate during the law enforcement process, which led to delays and the formation of weak cases for prosecution. In cross-border cases, Bangladeshi officials often did not travel abroad to collect evidence and did not have sufficient agreements to receive evidence from foreign governments. However, in one notable case, the government collaborated with United Arab Emirates (UAE) law enforcement and intelligence agencies to investigate organized crime and human trafficking following the arrest in Dhaka of a Bangladeshi alleged to have led a sex trafficking ring which forced Bangladeshi women into commercial sex in Dubai nightclubs. Police also arrested five other Bangladeshis in connection to the case. In the previous reporting period, the government established seven anti-trafficking tribunals by appointing seven judges and special prosecutors exclusively to hear human trafficking cases and address the substantial case backlog. Due to pandemic-related delays, the tribunals did not begin operating until August 2020. Legal experts praised the expediency in which one internal case before the Dhaka tribunal was decided. However, they cautioned the process for more complicated cases, especially those involving transnational elements, would require additional time before the tribunals. For cases heard outside of the tribunals, observers had previously noted the government generally did not dedicate sufficient resources to pre-trial investigations, and cases languished due to a lack of evidence or case backlogs. The government continued to allow mobile courts, established under the executive branch, to adjudicate labor violations, human trafficking cases, and migrant smuggling cases, especially in areas without a trafficking tribunal. Mobile courts could only prescribe penalties of up to three years’ imprisonment—less than the minimum penalty of five years’ imprisonment for trafficking offenses under the PSHTA. An NGO expressed concern that some village courts, five-person panels of local government officials and villagers, adjudicated trafficking cases but could only administer financial penalties, and that the courts may have subjected victims to intimidation, fraud, and corruption.

Despite continued reports of traffickers exploiting hundreds of Rohingya in forced labor and sex trafficking within Bangladesh, most Rohingya-related cases reported by law enforcement involved movement via boat—cases that might have amounted to migrant smuggling without elements of trafficking. The government did not establish clear legal reporting mechanisms within the camps, which impeded Rohingyas’ access to justice and increased impunity for offenders. Police and international humanitarian actors maintained multiple help desks in several refugee camps to provide legal assistance to female and child refugee victims of crime, but public distrust of police and security services deterred many victims of crimes, including trafficking, from approaching law enforcement for assistance. In previous reporting periods, the Bangladeshi High Court did not accept anti-trafficking cases filed by Rohingya, despite the law allowing Rohingya to file such cases in Bangladeshi courts. International organizations continued to allege some Bangladeshi officials facilitated trafficking of Rohingya, including by accepting bribes from traffickers to gain access to camps.

Official complicity in human trafficking, trafficking-related corruption, and impunity for traffickers remained serious concerns, continuing to inhibit law enforcement action during the year. The government was reluctant to acknowledge or investigate such claims. In registered brothels, some police charged bribes to ignore abuse within the establishments, to forego checking for the required documentation that each individual was older than 18, and to procure fraudulent documents for girls as young as 10 years old. Some labor attachés, local politicians, judges, and police requested bribes from victims and their families to pursue cases. Observers alleged some officials from district employment and manpower offices allegedly facilitated human trafficking, and some traffickers in rural areas had political connections that enabled them to operate with impunity. According to NGOs, some local politicians convinced victims to accept payment from recruitment sub-agents to not report fraudulent or exploitative labor recruitment actions to police. Other observers reported some police conducted slow and flawed investigations to allow traffickers to evade punishment, including when suspects were fellow officers.

Because a number of government officials, including parliamentarians, maintained close ties to foreign employment agencies, there were concerns such officials had conflicts of interest in approving migrant-friendly practices, such as prosecution of abusive recruitment agencies and increasing protections for migrant workers. During the reporting period, the Anti-Corruption Commission opened an investigation into a Bangladeshi parliamentarian accused of bribing Kuwaiti officials to bring more than 20,000 Bangladeshi migrant workers into Kuwait on work visas which stipulated a different job, and paid the workers significantly lower wages than promised, or none at all. Parliament revoked the member’s seat following his conviction and imprisonment in Kuwait for bribery. The government initiated an investigation into the accused’s wife, also a member of parliament and convicted in Kuwait on a related but lesser charge, and other family members. Media reported from 2015-2018, Malaysian employment agencies and 10 Bangladeshi recruitment agencies bribed officials and politicians in both countries to create a monopoly on recruitment of Bangladeshi workers. The monopoly increased the recruitment fees charged to workers from 37,000 BDT ($435) to more than 400,000 BDT ($4,710) per person—higher than the government’s legal maximum—which increased Bangladeshi migrant workers’ vulnerability to debt-based coercion. After two warnings from the Dhaka High Court, the government submitted its investigative report in November 2019, and for a second year no hearings were held. Other than the investigation into the member of parliament, and despite ongoing allegations of official complicity, the government did not report any other investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government employees complicit in human trafficking offenses.

The government increased the number of victims identified but maintained severely inadequate victim protection, especially for Bangladeshi trafficking victims identified overseas. The government identified 6,866 potential trafficking victims, a significant increase from 585 in the previous reporting period; however, the government did not report details of this number or account for the large increase and, in the past, had reported many smuggled migrants in the overall number. Traffickers exploited the majority of victims identified through forced labor. Organizations identified and provided support to at least 1,683 trafficking victims, including 339 Rohingya identified between December 2019-2020. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the government’s lead agency for combating trafficking, had standard operating procedures (SOPs) for proactive trafficking victim identification; however, the government did not report how widely officials disseminated or used the SOPs. Some police officers used a checklist to proactively identify victims when they came into contact with individuals in commercial sex establishments; however, the government did not formally adopt or disseminate the checklist, and its use was inconsistent. The government, in partnership with an international organization, developed a rapid victim identification mobile application during the reporting period, and the government reported initiating a virtual method for trafficking victims to file police reports.

During the reporting period, the government adopted a standard policy to refer victims to services, although it retained a court-order mechanism to do so, and some officials followed an NGO’s written guidelines for referral to and provision of care. Authorities could refer trafficking victims to government or NGO shelters; however, the government did not provide reimbursement or overall funding to the NGOs. The government referred 126 victims to government shelters and 167 to NGO-run shelters, an increase from approximately 74 victims referred in the previous reporting period. While the government did not provide trafficking-specific services, police operated multiple centers for women and child victims of violence, including trafficking, in each of Bangladesh’s eight divisions, offering short-term shelter, medical services, and psychological care. In response to pandemic-related restrictions, the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs created psycho-social support options through cell phone and email. With partial funding from a foreign government, the Ministry of Social Welfare (MSW) operated some longer-term shelters for women and child victims of violence, including trafficking victims, which could provide similar care. MSW shelters, however, required a court order referral, and victims could not leave without a family member’s consent. The government also required NGOs and international organizations to obtain a court order to contact victims in government shelters to provide additional services. Some victims reported abuse within the shelters. Authorities forced some victims who could not obtain family consent to remain in the shelters for as long as 10 years; some victims referred to these homes as “jails.” The government did not report how many trafficking victims its police and MSW shelters assisted during the reporting period. Government-run hospitals also had one-stop centers to assist female victims of crime, although it was unclear whether and how officials referred women to these centers. The government generally did not view adult men as trafficking victims. While some NGO shelters could house male victims, the majority of NGO shelters – similar to government shelters – could not, although most NGOs could provide non-shelter services to adult male victims.

The government did not allow foreign victims to access government services. NGOs could care for foreign trafficking victims. NGOs could provide two or three days of temporary care to Rohingya trafficking victims in safe homes but then most returned to the refugee camps, where they remained vulnerable to re-trafficking. The government’s NGO Affairs Bureau at times withheld approval for foreign funding to some NGOs working on some human rights or humanitarian issues, which may have affected provision of services to vulnerable populations, including trafficking victims. The pandemic limited resources and strained the ability of NGOs to offer victim services. The PSHTA entitled victims to protection during judicial proceedings, including police security, and allowed victims to provide testimony via video conference. While some victims participated in the investigation and prosecution of their traffickers, the government and NGOs noted insufficient implementation of the protection provision caused the vast majority of trafficking victims not to participate. While the 2012 PSHTA mandated creation of a fund to assist victims in seeking compensation from their traffickers, the government had not yet created the fund. All trafficking victims could file civil suits seeking compensation. The government reportedly screened for trafficking among individuals before arresting them; however, because law enforcement did not uniformly employ SOPs to identify trafficking victims among vulnerable populations, including women in commercial sex, law enforcement may have penalized sex trafficking victims for unlawful acts their traffickers compelled them to commit. For example, NGOs in the previous reporting period reported law enforcement raided brothels and arrested foreign women working in commercial sex for violating their visas without efforts to screen for trafficking. NGOs reported some authorities detained and fined trafficking victims in transit for failure to carry a passport and may have deported some victims without screening for trafficking. The government did not provide legal alternatives to removal of foreign trafficking victims to countries where they might face hardship or retribution.

The government made minimal efforts to assist Bangladeshi sex and labor trafficking victims abroad. MHA and the Government of India continued to revise but did not finalize SOPs to implement a 2015 memorandum of understanding (MOU) on trafficking victim identification and repatriation. The governments facilitated, and NGOs funded, repatriation of trafficking victims from India, but without a final, adopted SOP, the lengthy and complex approval system resulted in some Bangladeshi victims languishing in Indian shelters for up to six years. The Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment (MEWOE) maintained 29 labor offices in embassies and consulates overseas to provide welfare services to Bangladeshi migrant workers. International organizations continued to report their labor wings had neither the staffing nor the resources to assist the large number of migrant workers, especially at embassies with large numbers of Bangladeshi workers in the Gulf. MEWOE operated four safe houses abroad for female workers with strong indicators of trafficking who fled abusive employers but did not report how many individuals the shelters assisted. While the government could fund some trafficking victim repatriation, it often took so long that victims funded it themselves and incurred additional debt. MEWOE operated a desk at the airport providing up to 5,000 BDT ($59) and information on available NGO services to returning female migrant workers, including trafficking victims.

While MEWOE confirmed approximately 21,230 Bangladeshi workers returned from Saudi Arabia during the reporting period, many likely domestic workers, the government did not report screening any of the returning workers for signs of trafficking. Additionally, at least 396 Bangladeshi migrant workers from other countries returned with substantial indicators of trafficking during the reporting period, some of whom the government penalized on ambiguous charges of “damaging the image of the nation” without appropriately screening for trafficking. In September 2020, the government arrested and charged 81 migrant workers recently returned from Vietnam under section 54 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which allowed the government to detain, without a warrant, individuals suspected of committing or intending to commit cognizable offenses. Court documents included allegations the migrants damaged the country’s image by protesting their payment of recruitment fees for jobs that never materialized in front of the Bangladesh embassy in Vietnam. While MEWOE closed six recruiting agencies associated with the Vietnam case, the government maintained the charges against the 81 migrant workers. Additionally, 219 Bangladeshi workers who had returned from Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain were arrested on July 5, 2020 for allegedly committing similar ambiguous offenses abroad. NGOs called for the migrant workers’ release and treatment as trafficking victims. In November 2020, authorities released the migrant workers on bail. In the previous reporting period, the government occasionally required victims of labor exploitation, including labor trafficking, to remain at embassies overseas to pursue a civil case against their employers; many victims wanted to return home and thus could not pursue cases. The government did not file any trafficking cases in destination countries but did assist with investigations in Libya, Kuwait, and the UAE. Some officials blamed victims for their own labor trafficking, claiming workers were “unprepared.” The government relied on NGOs to support victims upon repatriation. Overseas Bangladeshi workers who secured their employment through MEWOE could lodge complaints with MEWOE to seek restitution for labor and recruitment violations, including allegations of forced labor, through an arbitration process. However, trafficking-related corruption impeded the process, which often yielded minimal awards. At least one NGO reported the Bureau of Manpower and Employment Training (BMET), which facilitated the arbitration, prohibited NGO advocates from accompanying migrant workers, forcing workers to arbitrate claims alone against both powerful recruitment agencies and BMET. MEWOE reported it settled 424 complaints against 142 recruitment agents in 2020 which compelled them to pay 24.04 million BDT ($282,820) total to migrant workers, compared with 214 recruitment agents compelled to pay 34.4 million BDT ($404,710) in compensation to 352 workers in 2019; MEWOE did not report whether any complaints involved forced labor. Because the government did not consistently initiate criminal investigations into migrant workers exploited abroad, and civil remedies remained inadequate, civil society organizations ran alternate dispute resolution systems to assist labor trafficking victims in obtaining some financial remedies.

The government maintained efforts to prevent trafficking. The government continued implementing its 2018-2022 anti-trafficking national action plan (NAP). The government harmonized the NAP implementation with funded Sustainable Development Goals to cover costs associated with 95 percent of the plan. MHA continued to lead the inter-ministerial anti-trafficking committee, which met bi-monthly. During the reporting year, many MHA officials with responsibilities for coordinating anti-trafficking efforts transitioned to new government positions, leading to some loss of institutional knowledge and momentum in implementing the NAP. The government created the National Authority, an institution to serve as a government-wide supervisory body on combating trafficking, but civil society reported the National Authority was neither active, nor funded. The government also did not clarify the distinct roles of the National Authority versus the inter-ministerial committee. MHA did not make its annual reports on human trafficking public, and anti-trafficking law enforcement data was published online but did not always contain current statistics.

The 2013 Overseas Employment and Migrants Act (OEMA) criminalized fraudulent recruitment and unlawful recruitment fees; however, these provisions still permitted the government to set legal recruitment fees at rates between 85,000 BDT and 262,000 BDT ($1,000-$3,080), high enough to render many migrant workers indebted and vulnerable to trafficking through debt-based coercion. A research organization reported that in 2018, Bangladeshi migrant workers traveling to Saudi Arabia on average paid more than 450 percent of the government’s fixed recruitment price for the total labor migration process. According to the research, the government’s fixed recruitment fee for Saudi Arabia was equivalent to a Bangladeshi worker’s salary for five-and-a-half-months, and workers in reality paid fees equivalent to more than two years of salary. The Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) oversaw 1,186 licensed labor recruitment agencies. The government’s vigilance task force continued operations against corrupt recruitment agencies, travel agencies, and dalals—sub-agents who operated in rural locations and connected prospective migrant workers to licensed employment agencies. MEWOE suspended 32 recruitment agencies for operating in violation of the law, including breach of employment contracts and recruitment regulations. Following the death of 26 Bangladeshi migrants in Libya, the government called for an investigation and punishment of perpetrators. The police arrested 19 people, including two labor recruiters. The government also approached INTERPOL for the first time to place six individuals on their red notice watchlist, which led to the arrest of two individuals at the close of the reporting period. NGOs and academics welcomed the quick arrests but questioned the government’s commitment to addressing vulnerabilities that led to trafficking in general. Authorities referred some of the recruitment agents to mobile courts, which convicted and sentenced two individuals to different terms of imprisonment and imposed fines of 1.46 million BDT ($17,180) for labor trafficking-related offenses under the 2013 OEMA, including sending migrant workers abroad unlawfully, charging unlawful recruitment fees, and fraudulent recruitment. Mobile courts prescribed fines or imprisonment; fines were inadequate penalties to deter the crime. In 2018, mobile courts convicted 11 individuals, although it was unclear in both years how many cases contained elements of trafficking in persons.

In February 2020, the government granted MEWOE authority to register recruiting sub-agents (dalals) and required brokers to register sub-agents and representatives. MEWOE did not report how it was monitoring existing or new agents for compliance. NGOs stated the government needed to do more to bring all recruiting companies into compliance with this directive. MEWOE reported it was developing a scoring process to rank licensed recruiting agencies. BAIRA acknowledged migrant workers frequently paid dalals fees in addition to the legal amount BAIRA agents charged before the workers began the formal recruitment process. Dalals also directly connected workers to overseas jobs by providing fake visas and other documentation, and in some cases, incorrect information about the migration process and the job in the destination country. Observers stated a migrant worker’s financial situation often determined job placement, not skills or abilities, and migrant workers frequently paid as much as five times the government’s maximum fee level. The government maintained a number of bilateral labor agreements, in part intended to protect Bangladeshi workers abroad, although there was no evidence the government enforced the MOUs. As some countries closed their borders due to the pandemic, the government expanded labor markets beyond traditional locations and, for the first time, signed labor agreements with Uzbekistan and Albania in November 2020. Some NGOs expressed concerns with the labor conditions in these countries. At the beginning of the pandemic, the government took steps to prepare for the anticipated repatriation of Bangladeshi workers, including by providing a one-time payment for returning migrant workers, and encouraging destination countries to protect migrant worker jobs and provide financial support for workers who had been laid off. For some Bangladeshis still migrating during the pandemic, the government continued to require pre-departure training, including safe migration and anti-trafficking components, and a 30-day pre-departure training course for female domestic workers. The government offered safe migration information through numerous district employment and manpower offices and training centers. However, it was unclear how many migrants were aware of these services and accessed them before traveling abroad. BMET, the government agency responsible for preparing and certifying outbound Bangladeshi workers, allowed some recruitment agencies to prohibit briefings on topics “against recruiting agencies’ interests.”

Labor inspectors had responsibility for monitoring workplaces and reporting allegations of forced and child labor to police for criminal investigation. While international organizations estimated 93 percent of child labor—including forced child labor—took place in the informal sector, inspectors were not empowered to monitor the informal sector. NGOs estimated child labor increased by 30 to 40 percent in 2020, due to the pandemic. Staffing and resources to inspect for labor violations, including forced and child labor, remained severely inadequate, and inspectors regularly conducted announced inspections, which gave employers time to hide children or exploitative conditions. Between July and December 2020, inspectors filed 20 cases against employers for the worst forms of child labor; they did not report whether they also referred these cases to police for criminal investigation. The government continued to conduct national awareness campaigns through print media, television, and text messages, and through its local counter-trafficking committees, at times in partnership with NGOs. The government maintained several helplines to report crime; during the reporting period, the helplines received 187 reports of trafficking.

The government continued to allow international organizations and NGOs to provide some assistance to refugees. In January 2020 the government endorsed an international organization’s pilot program to introduce the Burmese national curriculum to some Rohingya ages 11 to13 years old in refugee camps, allowing them access to some schooling. Due to pandemic-related lockdowns, schools remained closed during the reporting period and the pilot program could not be expanded. However, the government continued to bar Rohingya from formal schools and working legally and restricted their movement; in addition, it continued to suspend birth registration for Rohingya, all of which increased vulnerability to trafficking. The government provided anti-trafficking training to its troops prior to their deployment as peacekeepers and provided anti-trafficking training for its diplomatic personnel. During the previous reporting period, the government began criminally investigating one repatriated peacekeeper for alleged child sexual exploitation in Haiti in 2017, which the UN had substantiated in the previous reporting period; the investigation remained ongoing. The government did not make efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts. The government did not make efforts to reduce the demand for child sex tourism.

• TRAFFICKING PROFILE

As reported over the past five years, traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in Bangladesh, and traffickers exploit victims from Bangladesh abroad. Traffickers exploit some Bangladeshi men, women, and children who migrate willingly to work in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, especially Brunei, Malaysia, and the Maldives, in forced labor. Traffickers also exploit Bangladeshis in forced labor in South Asia, Southern and Eastern Africa, Europe, and the United States. Many Bangladeshis migrate for work each year through illegal channels and traffickers target them. Before departure, many workers assume debt to pay high recruitment fees, imposed legally by recruitment agencies belonging to BAIRA and illegally by unlicensed sub-agents; this places workers at risk of debt-based coercion. Some recruitment agencies, agents, and employers also commit recruitment fraud, including contract switching; this includes promising women and children jobs and exploiting them in sex trafficking upon arrival. In recent years, authorities identified more than 100 Bangladeshi male forced labor victims in construction in Vanuatu, and officials received thousands of complaints of non-payment of wages and contract switching among the 30,000 Bangladeshi migrant workers in Brunei. More than 69,000 of the 234,000 Bangladeshi workers in Maldives are undocumented, and some report passport retention, underpayment or non-payment of wages, and fraudulent recruitment. In Saudi Arabia, traffickers exploit through labor trafficking a substantial number of the hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi female domestic workers. Officials report that approximately 200 domestic workers return to Bangladesh from Saudi Arabia each month with indicators of forced labor.

Traffickers exploit Bangladeshi women and girls in forced labor and sex trafficking abroad, including in India, Pakistan, and Gulf countries. Traffickers sold some women who migrated through Bangladeshi recruitment agencies to Lebanon or Jordan for domestic work into forced labor. Some Chinese traffickers force Bangladeshi women, specifically indigenous women from the Chittagong Hill Tracts, into sex trafficking and domestic servitude through arranged marriages. Some traffickers falsify identity documents to make children appear older than age 18 to send them abroad. Since 2016, 473 bodies of deceased Bangladeshi domestic workers have been repatriated from the Middle East, including 63 between January and September 2020. This includes the body of a 13-year-old girl sent to Saudi Arabia through a labor recruiter with a falsified passport listing her age as 27. During 2020, NGOs reported traffickers used promises of employment in “COVID-19 free” locations to attract victims.

Traffickers continue to exploit adults and children from all regions of the country in Bangladesh’s legal brothels, many illegal brothels, and private hotels. Traffickers use false promises of work to lure poor women and children into sex trafficking and fabricate exorbitant debts the women and girls as young as 10 must repay. Child sex trafficking remained widespread; experts estimate 20,000 children are both growing up in and are exploited in commercial sex in Bangladeshi brothels. Several women and girls reported traffickers preyed on them and sold them to brothels, after the women fled abusive child marriages. Other women reported they had grown up in brothels because their mothers were engaged in commercial sex, and brothel owners forced them into commercial sex when they were children. In some registered brothels, owners force children to take steroids to appear older. In legal brothels, some police charge bribes to ignore abuse within the establishment, forego checking for required documentation that each individual is older than 18, and to procure fraudulent documentation for children as young as 10 years old. Some traffickers force sex trafficking victims to become addicted to drugs and use addiction to keep them in sex trafficking and forced criminality. Sex traffickers exploit street children in exchange for food, shelter, protection, and money. NGOs describe increasingly widespread job losses, wage cuts, and poverty in rural areas and urban slums due to the pandemic, which forces some children into begging and commercial sex.

Traffickers often used debt-based coercion to compel workers into labor, exploiting an initial debt assumed by a worker as part of the employment terms. Traffickers force adults and children to work in the shrimp and fish processing industries, aluminum, tea, and garment factories, brick kilns, dry fish production, and shipbreaking. Traffickers force children younger than 14 into domestic work, including through torture and restricting their movement. In 2018, a survey by an international organization found more than 400,000 children in domestic work in Bangladesh. Bangladeshi children are at risk for forced labor in tanneries. Traffickers coerce street children into criminality or force them to beg, and begging ringmasters sometimes maim children to increase earnings. Traffickers force children, especially in border areas, to produce and transport drugs, particularly yaba . Traffickers use coercive debts to force Bangladeshi families and Indian migrant workers to labor in brick kilns, shrimp farming, and on tea estates. NGOs allege some officials allow human traffickers to operate at India-Bangladesh border crossings and maritime embarkation points.

Bangladesh hosts more than one million undocumented Rohingya in refugee camps and host communities in Cox’s Bazar near the Burmese border and other parts of the country, approximately 700,000 of whom arrived after August 2017. Traffickers exploit Rohingya men, women, and children from refugee camps in sex and labor trafficking both within Bangladesh and transnationally. Traffickers transport Rohingya girls within Bangladesh to Chittagong and Dhaka and transnationally to India, Malaysia, and Nepal for sex trafficking, sometimes using false promises of jobs or marriage; some traffickers “trade” these girls over the internet. As reported in previous reporting periods, local criminal networks take Rohingya women from refugee camps at night, exploit them in sex trafficking, and bring them back to the camps during the day. International organizations allege some Bangladeshi officials facilitate trafficking of Rohingya, including accepting bribes from traffickers to gain access to camps. Rohingya girls and boys are recruited from camps and forced to labor as shop hands, fishers, rickshaw pullers, and domestic workers. Some Bangladeshi fishers use debt-based coercion to exploit Rohingya men if they place their shelter on the fisher’s land. Some Rohingya men who fled to Bangladesh from Burma decades ago have been trapped in forced labor through debt-based coercion to Bangladeshi fishers for decades. In 2016, some traffickers sold into forced labor Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants, who traveled by boat to Southeast Asian and could not pay ransoms. Multiple NGOs and humanitarian officials assess Rohingyas’ statelessness and inability to receive formal schooling or to work legally has increased their vulnerability to traffickers. International organizations allege some Bangladeshi officials facilitate trafficking of Rohingya, including by accepting bribes from traffickers to gain access to camps. Tourists increase demand for child sex tourism, including exploitation of Rohingya girls, near Cox’s Bazar.

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Trafficking in Women and Children in Bangladesh: Laws and Strategies for Prevention

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Review of Laws against Human Trafficking in Bangladesh prepared for Winrock International's Actions for Combating Trafficking-in-Persons (ACT) Program

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SRYAHWA Publication

Mohammad S H A H A D A T Hossain

Human trafficking is one of the largest organized crimes and the darkest episode of population mobility around the world which is often known as modern-day slavery. Victims of this crime have completely lost their freedom and dignity under compulsion. Statistics revealed that human trafficking, in the form of forced labor, generates $150 billion every year and about 30 million people are trapped in such human slavery out of which 14.2 million have exploited for forced labor, and 4.5 million have undergone sexual exploitation. In response to the issue, states of concern throughout the world have adopted possible measures to combat it at a national level in line with global initiatives. In this process, both Bangladesh and Malaysia legislated anti-trafficking laws to combat the crime. This paper is mainly a comparative analysis of human trafficking laws between Bangladesh and Malaysia. The researchers have compared the laws of both countries on several issues and identified similarities and differences in terms of defining the crimes, enforcement mechanism, protection of the victims, and trial of the offenders, etc. In addition, the study has investigated the situation of this crime in the South Asian region highlighting the context of Bangladesh and Malaysia. Furthermore, the study has brought some recommendations for further enhancement of both instruments. The possible outcome of this study is finding certain gaps in both laws which are requiring to be fulfilled for combating human trafficking effectively. This is doctrinal research along with comparative approaches. The researchers have followed the descriptive and analytical methods of study to achieve the objectives of the paper. The study has critically examined the essential legal issues in both laws according to international standards. However, the descriptive approach has considered the background and conceptual framework of human trafficking along with the current situation of both countries. The analytical approach, on the other hand, explored the basic mechanism provided by the anti-trafficking laws of the countries with a view to ascertain the lacuna of both laws. Furthermore, the researchers reviewed relevant literature in this regard and a few relevant experts have been interviewed over the technical matters of these laws.

Human trafficking is one of the most atrocious crimes and grave violation of human rights in the present world. It is the abuse of one person by another that is taken place within a country or across borders and constitutes a gross challenge to humanity affecting millions of people from various parts of the globe irrespective of region, violates global and national laws, undermines universally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms, negatively impacts families and communities, and inspires perpetrators with billions of dollars in profits. Using undue influence, threat, fraud, coercion and other horrible means, traffickers prey on the helpless, desperate, and the vulnerable. In recent times the human trafficking through sea-route among in its numerous forms has become a catchphrase in Bangladesh that has tensed up the nerve of common people in general who are not getting rid of the curse of this brutality. This academic piece of research work intends mainly to illustrate the legal and institutional framework of sea-route human trafficking for combating this crime in Bangladesh. Another aim of this research is to illustrate the detailed account of human trafficking in Bangladesh and its obligation under the international human rights instruments which is most pertinent to clarify its thematic features. It further strives to analyze critically the nature and gravity of this offence, establish widespread recognition of the human trafficking as a trans-border crime and the need to make some policy recommendations and make joint efforts regarding the prevention of this offence and effective remedy of the victim.

Jannatul Rupa

Nasimul Hasan Sihad

Pranab Panday

The major purpose of this paper is to analyze present state and process of trafficking, network relations among the traffickers and the causes of trafficking and its impact in a patriarchal social system like Bangladesh where the women are victims of feminization of poverty and marital dissolution in terms of desertion, separation and divorce and how to get rid of this curse. And this is mostly happen with the rural women. It does not mean that urban women are not victims of feminization of poverty and marital dissolution. But the intensity of sufferings among rural women is far more than urban women in Bangladesh. The available secondary data substantiates that trafficking has become a major issues of concern and its intensity is growing day by day in Bangladesh. It has also found that existing social structure, economic system, cultural condition and geographical setting of Bangladesh affects the trafficking of women in children and compelled them to involve in sex-trade, domestic work, harmful industrial work, forced marriage, forced begging, camel jockeying, adoption trade and organ harvesting. This paper also suggests an anti-trafficking intervention model to prevent trafficking as well as to reintegrate the trafficked victims with the main stream of population.

ELCOP Summer School YEAR BOOK

Kohinur Urmee

Bangladesh is a source and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in person. A significant share of Bangladesh’s trafficking victims are men recruited for work overseas with fraudulent employment offers who are subsequently exploited under conditions of forced labor or bondage. In this perspective it is considered as modern day slavery and crime against humanity. The trafficking of humans has become what many scholars have identified as a crime that violates every right a person possesses. It is a form of organized crime profiting and growing in size faster than any other trade system. It consists of purchase of another person, as personal property. The person purchased is forced to engage in acts for the benefit of the trafficker. Bangladesh acts as an important source and transit route for trafficking in persons in South Asia. Traffickers are those who take part into the process and collect the financial profits. They also maintain international link with law enforcement agencies, border guards, and criminal gangs including smugglers and even share their profits. Typically chosen are those with dysfunctional family histories, a lack of education, homelessness, unemployed, having reluctant lifestyle and those who live in poverty-stricken developing countries with limited knowledge of resources to begin living a good life. Victims face mental and physical abuse and oftentimes have no means of escaping the torture. After being trafficked, victims may suffer physically and psychologically due to zero health-care situation, abuse, and stress, threats against self and family and even die on the grounds of denial of rights and elemental care and high degree of humiliation. Considering the perspective, initially the paper will portray the aspects of human trafficking and will focus to analyze the causes and consequences of this crime in connection to the established victimological theories. Lastly it will suggest some recommendations to enforce victims’ rights to re-settle them in the society effectively.

International Journal of Criminal, Common and Statutory Law

Trafficking in person is a dilemma common to almost all countries in the world. East and south Asian countries are mostly encountering the offenses relating to human trafficking. This paper mainly investigates the protections for the victims of trafficking in person under the Anti-Trafficking in Person and Anti-Smuggling of Migration Act, 2007 of Malaysia. Malaysia expands its preventive and prosecuting measures to combat trafficking in person as well as provides several protections for the victims of these crimes similar to other countries. The study further explores the situation of trafficking in person in Malaysia along with the situation of Asian regions. Furthermore, the researchers critically analyses the protection mechanism provided by the above Act and finds out several legal gap to be reconsidered for boosting up the law for effective prevention of the crime. In addition, the research comes up with few suggestions for further improvement of the Act. The aim of this study is to examine the weaknesses in the protections provided by the existing Act and address the researchers and policy makers of Bangladesh to pay adequate attention to this. It further aims to provide a number of protections to the learners, human rights activists, victims support centers for better understanding of the protective measures in Malaysia which may pave the way to compare with respective countries' "protection" procedures, especially in Bangladesh. The possible outcome of this paper is that the Act prescribes several protections for the victims that may be considered in the context of Bangladesh. This is a doctrinal research and follows qualitative method of research. Hence, researcher consults with the specific law mentioned above along with relevant international laws on human trafficking and their protections. In addition, researchers examine the scholarly works, articles, and reports on human trafficking in Malaysia and take statistical data and analyze to achieve the objectives of this paper.

Afsana Begum

The entire paper focuses a holistic overview on Trafficking in Bangladesh. The primary portion of the assignment deals with the definitional perspectives and later part shows the causes of trafficking. The next part of the paper talks about the trafficking zone in Bangladesh and I have given a comparative analysis of South Asian perspectives. With a view to perceiving the entire scenario of my prime concern I have cited the connected laws and jotted down the case study what has given me a clear understanding to highlight the possible preventive measures in the context of Bangladesh. At the end of the day I have stated the concluding remarks as well.

Journal of Law, Policy and Globalization

Sumona Sharmin

The trafficking in persons and migrant smuggling is one of the extreme and offensive threats to the humanity. This global and trembling issue has recently gained much more attention in South Asia, particularly in Bangladesh and Myanmar. This problem has been considered as one of the most shocking domestic threat in Bangladesh despite having so called 'measures' like legal framework, government and nongovernment initiatives to address the problem of trafficking and migrant smuggling from Bangladesh. In terms of labour migration, the problem is still undetected and gradually taking more serious form. This paper mainly provides a basic understanding of the key terms associated with trafficking and analyzes international level best practices that addresses the issues of trafficking and migrant smuggling focusing the community based model. The outcome of this paper can be introduced in Bangladesh and other developing countries with a view to protect the migrants, particularly to ...

Md. Ruhul Amin

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The State of Human Trafficking in Bangladesh

FEATURED RESEARCH PAPER , 26 Apr 2021

Dr. Rashida Khanam – TRANSCEND Media Service

“ Almost 10 million Bangladeshi migrants work across the world. A UNICEF report states that, approximately 400 women and children in Bangladesh are victims of trafficking every month. According to a report, approximately 3,000,000 Bangladeshi children and women have been trafficked out of the country in the last 10 years. A Pakistan based organization, Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid’s report shows nearly 200,000 Bangladeshi women and girls were sold in Pakistan.  The statistics highlight how grave the human trafficking situation is in Bangladesh…”

Human trafficking is a violation of human rights, an unethical and heinous crime against humanity. “The trade of human beings, a modern form of slavery . . . violates the God-given dignity . . .”. 1  Pope Francis. Trafficking in persons over the past 20 years has generated an astounding attention across the world. The crime has a growing coverage in the media. Anti-trafficking activities mounted high and most of the countries’ new policies, laws and enforcement mechanisms emerged to combat the problem. 2 It is, therefore, a global crime having its impact at local and transnational levels. According to the UN, an estimated 25 million people worldwide are victims of labor and sex trafficking. Human trafficking earns global profits of roughly $ 150B a year and $ 99B of which comes from commercial sexual exploitation. 3  “Human trafficking impedes national and international economic growth. Within the next 10 years, crime experts expect human trafficking to surpass drugs and arms trafficking in its incidence, cost to human well-being and profitability to criminals.” 4

Human Trafficking as a legal concept is defined  by the basis of its requisite traits such as actions-recruitment, transportation, harboring of victims by using force, fraud and other forms of coercion for the purpose of exploitation. 5 The issue, trafficking in persons should judge the broad range of actions and consequences that involve “different stages ranging from the organization of the supply of people of vulnerable to exploitation and harm, the process of moving to the demand for the service or labor of trafficked person.” 6

Alarming trends in human trafficking in Asia region have raised the urgency of dealing with the threatening issue. More than 85 percent of victims were trafficked from within the region. Bangladesh, a country in South Asia, is the eighth-most populous country in the world and is one of the sources and transit countries. It is a central point of trafficking in person being located near the Gulf-region linking to South Asia for men, women and children being trafficked person as forced labor and forced prostitution.

The history of woman and child trafficking in Bangladesh goes back to the early 50’s, when camel race and “jockey” gained momentum in Middle East countries. Women and children are being trafficked out of Bangladesh to various countries predominantly to India, Pakistan, and the Middle Eastern countries. About 25,000 women and children are being trafficked to other countries from Bangladesh every year. 7  One million women and children have been trafficked out of the country in the last 30 years.

A UNICEF report states that, approximately 400 women and children in Bangladesh are victims of trafficking every month. According to a report, approximately 3,000,000 Bangladeshi children and women have been trafficked out of the country in the last 10 years. A Pakistan based organization, Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid’s report shows nearly 200,000 Bangladeshi women and girls were sold in Pakistan.  The statistics highlight how grave the human trafficking situation is in Bangladesh. 8 Almost 10 million Bangladeshi migrants work across the world.

Ninety percent of them are in Middle Eastern countries. Many Bangladeshi trafficking victims including men and women are victimized in those countries either for sexual exploitation, or for forced labor and domestic servitude. The horrific death of Abiron Begum Ansar, a Bangladeshi woman exposed the tragic plight of human trafficking. Abiron had to endure untold horrors while employed to a Saudi household. Her employer would not give her food, used to beat her, poured hot water on her body and also put her head into a grill. This is especially significant for Bangladesh as “it had to see 500 bodies of its female migrant workers flown back over the last five years, at least 200 of them from Saudi Arabia alone.” 9    Bangladeshis are lured to go to those countries.

There is lack of exact figure of vulnerability of human trafficking due to the fact that “human trafficking is now even more underground and less visible.” 10  Now, trafficking in person is commencing through social media as a result of technological advancement. Traffickers are using online social media to convince people and to proliferating their trafficking operations through fraudulent mechanisms.

Legalized Prostitution Increased Human Trafficking

An empirical study conducted over “a cross-section of up to 150 countries shows that the scale effect dominates the substitution effect according to economic theory. On average, countries where prostitution is legal experience larger reported human trafficking inflows.” 11 This finding can also be seen in Bangladesh and other countries around the world.

Internal and External Case of Human Trafficking

In the case of internal trafficking, the traffickers with the method of false promises of a better life with good employment opportunities allure women and children by using various techniques, from their home-the safe place, mostly victims from rural areas with minimal survival opportunities, and sell them to brothels.  “At the cross border- level trafficking, victims are transported and transferred to destinations further away such as India, Pakistan and Middle Eastern countries, by using illegal acts and processes which culminate in the most corrosive forms of human rights violations and a life of unspeakable agony and torture.” 12

Demand and Supply Factors of Human Trafficking in Bangladesh

The crime of human trafficking, a form of “modern slavery is the result of human vulnerability”. 13   People’s vulnerability let them exposed to become vulnerable to exploitation and this heinous business continually seek labor sources at lower cost. “The trafficking of human beings generates profit and therefore, a market for human trafficking is created” 14  It (recruitment) begins at the safe place-home with the root cause of vulnerability. Children and women become vulnerable due to poverty, social inequality, deeply rooted discrimination particularly against women and girls are the most commonly identified causes to the trafficking process. “Deeply rooted discrimination and low status of women within Bangladesh society excluded them from development opportunities disproportionately.

They experience poverty more intensely than men as they have fewer assets such as skills, education or resources to remove themselves from these situations, and the incidence of poverty is higher for women which make them at high risk of being trafficked.” 15  The vulnerability situation is commonly noted as “push” factors that reflects the supply condition in Bangladesh. The “pull” factors include a demand for cheap labor and goods, the possibility of higher living standards, and the hope for a better life. Along with these factors environmental and natural disasters put in motion the situation to increasing people’s vulnerabilities. Demand varies in each of this condition on the situation of social, economic, cultural, legal and political environment. The interaction of Demand and Supply, lead people to fall into the trap of traffickers.

Human Trafficking a Complex and Interlinked Issue (social, economic and political dimension)

Poverty alone does not necessarily create vulnerability to human trafficking, but when combined with other factors, this can lead to a higher risk for being trafficked. Lack of Social justice due to globalization of economy, crony capitalism, weak governance, corruption in every level of society facilitates trafficking of women, children and men internally and externally. “As more families are marginalized in the development process, do children and women respond to the expanding client market.” 16  Development process in this way helps traffickers to carry on their heinous crime against humanity as they find human trafficking more profitable than other.

Covid-19 Pandemic: Women and Children’s Trafficking in Bangladesh

Covid-19 Pandemic has further increased women and children’s trafficking in Bangladesh. In this situation poverty has aggravated situation letting especially rural people to be more vulnerable to trafficking.  Forced child marriage and rape case have been increased at an alarming rate and this tempts further the traffickers to gratify their greed at the cost of women and girls’ dignity. During pandemic, “626 children were reportedly raped between January and December last year.” 17

Violence against women is worse than past years. Amid pandemic 1,627 women were raped or gang raped. 18 The traffickers avail the horrific situation in carrying on human trafficking. According to IOM data since September 2017 to June 2020, 625 victims of trafficking (45% Rohingya and 55% Bangladeshi host country) were identified and assisted by IOM and its partners in Cox’s Bazar. 19

Human Trafficking is now considered as one of the major concerns for Bangladesh. To combat human trafficking Bangladesh government has taken   significant measures. It prevents the trafficking of women and children for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation and involuntary servitude under the Repression of Women and Children Act 2000(as amended in 2003). But sex-trafficking is a rising form of human trafficking in Bangladesh. Measures have also been taken in Articles 372 and 373 of its penal code prohibiting selling and buying of children under the age of 18 for prostitution.

The Prevention and Suppression of Human Trafficking Act (PSHT), 2012 has come into effect for restraining human trafficking. Recently, the government through Ministry of Home Affairs has undertaken a number of measures to suppress trafficking in women and children. Even then human trafficking is on increasing trend at internal periphery and externally. And sex-trafficking is a rising form of human trafficking in Bangladesh. An estimated 100,000 women and young girls are working as prostitutes, but less than 10 percent are working voluntarily. Forced sex work is an issue affecting women and girls all over Bangladesh. This is due to corruption and criminality as well as ineffectiveness of key institutions, lack of accountability and impunity among the key factors. 20

Therefore, enactment of laws is not enough; it needs to be enforced unrelentingly. Secret alliance between corrupt government officials and criminal networks is a serious problem in Bangladesh in combating trafficking. Traffickers get help of the corrupt officials in trafficking the victims along the borders. According to the Chairman of the Anti- Corruption Commission “Government organizations and departments are not serious enough about curbing institutional corruption.” 21 Therefore, the gap between the legal framework and the enforcement of relevant laws at all levels pose problem in combating human trafficking. It is disgraceful to mention that, the Bangladeshi lawmaker (MP), Mohammad Shahid Islam ( Kazi Papul)  was sentenced to four years’ rigorous imprisonment by a Kuwaiti court on January 28, 2021.

Papul was elected as an independent candidate. He was accused of human trafficking, money laundering and bribing Kuwaiti officials with millions of dollars to recruit Bangladeshi workers. He was a part of an “organized gang” made up of two Kuwaitis. They recruited over 20,000 Bangladeshi workers to Kuwait through fraudulent means by their companies in exchange for payments ranging between KD2, 500 and KD2, 700 for each, reported  The Times . “Papul is also being investigated by Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission over allegations of amassing TK 1,400 crore by trafficking people to Kuwait and laundering money to different countries.” 22

Importance of Integrating the Anti- trafficking Measures

This highlights the importance of integrating the anti-trafficking measures into a humanitarian action. Bangladesh Government must work in collaboration with its partners and counter partners helping its large migrant workforce to live and work with dignity and to end human trafficking, the crime against humanity.

Religions and Religious Organizations Addressing human Trafficking

Religions and Religious Organizations have been working since long decades, with the poor, immigrants, and sexually exploited victim, and they possess “significant knowledge of the manifestations of this form of exploitation and can be important stakeholders in combating human trafficking”. 23  Human trafficking is not a form of criminal activity that can be evaded solely through the enactment of criminal laws.  It is more than a crime. Legal proceeding against traffickers is not enough. “Measures must be taken to prevent human trafficking, protect victims of human trafficking, and make partnership with  governments and other organizations to end human trafficking effectively and comprehensively” 24

Religious organizations “ having worked with these populations for centuries, thus affording them the ability to more easily identify victims or those at risk of trafficking as well.” 25  Therefore, Religions and religious organizations can be effective partners in fighting human trafficking. 26 Trafficking must be combated with tools that are effective at global and local levels. Such tools include the world’s religions and religious organizations. Religious organizations with “significant knowledge of the manifestations of this form of exploitation and can be important stakeholders in combating it” 27  with expertise through their work with the poor, immigrants, and sexually exploited. One of the greatest strengths of religious organizations can be their ability to partner with other organizations – government or non-government.

Across the world, religions and their affiliates have been working in the area of the true social issues that are being recognized as the main causes of human trafficking. “These faith-based organizations are the only civil society actors present globally, regionally, and locally. They offer valuable tools against human trafficking.” 28

The Global Freedom Network is an organization dedicated to eradicating human trafficking by engaging faith leaders namely, Patriarch Bartholomew (orthodox), Grand Imam of Al- Azhar (Muslim), Datuk K. Sri Dhammaratana (Buddhist), Chief Rabbi David Rosen (Jewish), and Pope Francis who assembled and signed the Declaration to take action. 29

The International Network of Consecrated Against Trafficking in Persons (Talitha Kum) has been performing a significant role against human trafficking.  Hundreds of women, for example, have been working in 80 different congregations to combat human trafficking. These women have created an anti-trafficking kit language to educate religious communities, seminaries, schools, and parishes. Religious communities in an organized way often work with vulnerable people by providing necessary services to the people who are at a high risk of being trafficked. “They often possess the knowledge of the realities of human trafficking on the local level, as well as the trust of the population. This makes then unequally suited to identify and combat human trafficking.” 30

RfP International- the World’s largest and most representative multi-religious organization advances common action against social ills created by political, social and economic factors. Its local chapter RfP Bangladesh has been playing a significant role since its inception addressing social issues. At the RfP 10 th  World Assembly held in Lindau, Germany in August 2019, religious leaders from Myanmar and Bangladesh, in a Joint Statement: ‘Religions for Peace Bangladesh’, expressed their great concern over the Rohingya issue and stated clearly their confidence to build and striving to find a peaceful and just solution to the tragic plight of Rohingya refugees who were compelled to flee to Bangladesh.

RfP Bangladesh carried out an ACRP Flagship Project: “Protection of Children’s Rights and Advancing Their Well-being.” Therefore, religious organizations can be a formidable partner in combating human trafficking.

Holistic /International Approach

Palermo Protocol developed as a holistic approach to human trafficking, launched as a strategy built on previously accepted UN Convention which would form the touchstones for an international approach. With the current framework of the “Four P’s”: Protection, Prevention, Prosecution, and Partnership have offered additional condition in combating human trafficking. “Religions are relevant in conceiving in and executing a practicable strategy to end human trafficking” 31  This document signifies the strengths of religions and applies them to these “Four P’s” to point out clearly the unique advantages religion has in participating effective way in combating crime against humanity. 32

Therefore, Bangladesh government would be able in deepening it’s anti-trafficking policy in collaboration with the shared response of Religious organizations along with all sectors of society- government, civil society organizations, businesses, law enforcement and judicial to eliminate human trafficking, the heinous crime against humanity.

Finally, “the presence of nonkilling ethic in world spiritual and humanist traditions reveals divine intent to plant profound respect for life in the consciousness of humankind. On the other, it demonstrates human capacity to receive, respond to or to create such a principle” 33 for serving humanity providing justice to all.

References:

• Pope Francis.
• According to the United Nations 134 countries have criminalized trafficking and        25 have not done so(UNODC 2012 SS), cited in “New Directions in Research on Human Trafficking”, Ronald Weitzer, Journals.sagepub.com, doi, pdf
• ILO Report.
• Schauer and Wheaton, 2006, 164-165.
• Human Trafficking: A Security Concern for Bangladesh, BIPSS, Toward a Secure World (www.bipss.org.bd).
• The Daily Star , June 1, 2020.
• United Nations office on Drugs and Crime Interview: Human Trafficking in Bangladesh.
• Slobhan Mullally, UN Special rapporteur on Internal and Cross-border Trafficking.
• Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?  World Development ,   Volume 41, January 2013, pages 67-82.
• United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, op.cit.
• Bales, 2000, 15.
• Economic of Human Trafficking, Elizabeth M. Wheaton, Edward J. Schauer, Thomas V. Galli, 19 July 2010.
• Combating Trafficking of Women and Children in South Asia, Country Paper, Bangladesh, 2002, Asian Development Bank Canada: Agriteam Canada Consulting Ltd., p.11.
• Mary Graw Leary, op.cit.
• The Daily Star, January 10, 2021.
• World Day against Human Trafficking, July 30, 2020.
• The Daily Star , January 1,2021
• op.cit, January 29,2021.
• op.cit. February 9, 2021.
• op.cit. February 20,2021.
• Mary Leary, Religion and Human Trafficking, 29 October, 2015.
• (Quoting) Det. Inspector Kevin Hyland, 10 (8)
• Mary Leary, op.cit.
• Eugenia Bonnetti, Slaves No More, 1(2013).
• Glenn D. Paige,  The Nonkilling Global Political Science , 2009[2002] 41.

____________________________________________________

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 26 Apr 2021.

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One Response to “The State of Human Trafficking in Bangladesh”

According to a report, approximately 3,000,000 Bangladeshi children and women have been trafficked out of the country in the last 10 years. A Pakistan based organization, Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid’s report shows nearly 200,000 Bangladeshi women and girls were sold in Pakistan. The statistics highlight how grave the human trafficking situation is in Bangladesh.8 The footnote 8 says, “op.cit. January 25, 2021” – What does this op.cit refers to? The figure looks fishy

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SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The Rohingya community has survived genocide in Myanmar. They also continue to face an onward struggle to survive the debilitating socio-economic conditions of refugee and IDP camps, further persecution and discrimination, and the risks associated with travelling in search of physical and socio-economic security. They are vulnerable to trafficking for different forms of exploitation and to human rights violations resulting from a lack of state protections. This paper considers the additional layers of vulnerability that arise from the discriminatory and arbitrary denial of citizenship in their home country, Myanmar, and denial of legal status in the countries to which they fled. Based on qualitative research in Myanmar, Bangladesh, India and Malaysia, the paper joins up the issues across different country contexts, revealing that each family’s search for peace and security often spans multiple countries and multiple generations.

This paper finds that statelessness should not simply be viewed as a cause or consequence of trafficking. Rather it is an intersectional factor that compounds the risks of exploitation and other human rights abuses at the hands of both brokers and state authorities. This includes abduction, extortion, forced labour and other forms of labour exploitation, sexual exploitation, torture, death, arbitrary arrest, indefinite detention and refoulement. Further, the intergenerational nature of Rohingya displacement and statelessness creates barriers to securing durable solutions. The risks of further exploitation or trafficking are therefore sustained across lifetimes and across different generations. The research indicates that statelessness increases the likelihood of trafficking outcomes; compounds the negative impact of experiences of exploitation; and leaves victims exposed to continued risks and vulnerabilities to further trafficking.

This paper is divided into two parts. Part 1 outlines six issues that lie at the intersections of statelessness and trafficking experiences: persecution; socioeconomic insecurities; lack of access to regular and safe migration; lack of legal protections and detention; lack of access to safe and decent work; and intergenerational statelessness. Part 2 explores the experiences of Rohingyas in different country contexts: Myanmar; Bangladesh; India; and Malaysia. The paper’s recommendations highlight the importance of ensuring that the specific vulnerabilities of stateless people are factored into anti-trafficking initiatives and international protection frameworks.

Methodology

This research is collaborative and centres the knowledge and analysis of local and Rohingya researchers and community workers. Data was collected and analysed from qualitative research amongst Rohingya populations in four countries. This includes: 30 in-depth interviews with Rohingyas in Bangladesh, Myanmar, India and Malaysia; detailed observations and reports over six months from four Rohingya researchers living in four different areas of Rakhine State Myanmar; and the analysis of Rohingya key workers in Malaysia, Bangladesh, India and in diaspora. It further draws on discussions from two multi-country focus groups with Rohingya community workers organised by ISI in support of the 2023 report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons especially women and children.

Our research includes a focus on the gendered experiences of both statelessness and trafficking. The majority of interviews were with women, conducted in women-only spaces by other women in Rohingya, Burmese or Hindi languages. Interviews were carefully designed to be sensitive to experiences of trauma and as such to not ask women to recount personal experiences of trauma. Since the research was conducted in conflict-affected areas and refugee settings, we developed a strong ethical framework to minimalize risk. We ensure the security of data, and the anonymity of research participants and, where necessary, researchers.

The Rohingya are an ethnic community belonging to Rakhine State in Myanmar, whose histories in Rakhine, now in the territory of Myanmar, long pre-date modern nation-states and borders. The Rohingya’s arbitrary and discriminatory deprivation of nationality by Myanmar, which was initiated under military rule, is a key element in the decadeslong persecution and genocide perpetrated against the community. The persecution of Rohingya in Myanmar and their lack of protection as refugees outside Myanmar are strongly linked to Myanmar’s systematic imposition of statelessness on Rohingyas. Myanmar’s 1982 ethno-centric and exclusionary Citizenship Law, together with the arbitrary implementation of citizenship rules, provided a domestic framework that sanctioned discrimination, persecution and expulsion. The clear exclusion of Rohingya from access to citizenship by right - as opposed to a highly discretionary and arbitrary naturalisation procedure - was a deliberate next step towards the ratcheting up of abuses against the group. As such, Rohingya have fled structural discrimination and persecution in Myanmar over decades resulting in a large and scattered refugee population world-wide. It is estimated that three quarters of the Rohingya population currently live outside Myanmar.

There are now approximately one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and hundreds of thousands of Rohingya in other countries, such as Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East; India, Pakistan and elsewhere in South Asia; Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. A smaller number of Rohingyas have settled in Australia, Europe and North America. Within the contexts of the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, Rohingyas have experienced inter-generational statelessness and continue to live in situations of protracted displacement without access to legal status or the legal right to work. This has prevented children and youth from accessing formal education and training and has driven men and women into precarious work in the informal sectors of the economy with few safety standards, often exposed to exploitation and with no access to social safety nets. In times of external shocks, including the COVID-19 pandemic, humanitarian disaster and conflict, Rohingya families are at heightened risk of hunger, illness and violence.1 Family members in Myanmar and elsewhere who rely on remittances from those working overseas are also increasingly vulnerable to these impacts.

Exposure to violence, structural discrimination, movement restrictions and socio-economic hardship in both Myanmar and Bangladesh drive onwards migration. There are currently two main routes from Bangladesh and Myanmar to other countries of Southeast Asia and beyond: by boat across the Andaman Sea to Malaysia, Indonesia and elsewhere; and by land through Myanmar, across the border into Thailand and onwards to Malaysia and elsewhere. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 3,500 Rohingyas attempted sea crossings in the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal in 2022. This figure represents a 360 per cent increase and signals increasing desperation compared to 2021 when around 700 individuals were recorded to have made similar journeys. Regarding the death toll, around 348 individuals are believed to have died or gone missing at sea making 2022 one of the deadliest years for the sea journey since 2014.

Nearly 45 per cent of those rescued were women and children. Routes across land are also risky. In many situations, travellers never reach their destination. They may be arrested, abandoned, or die en route. Others are abused or exploited.

Experiences of abuse and exploitation en route include:

• Extortion from brokers such as:

Transportation fees rising four or five-fold after departure or demands of extra money for passengers to disembark boats or complete the journey.

Threats, violence and sometimes abduction of family members in different countries to recover debts/extra costs.

Violence, torture or rape by brokers and security forces.

Being ‘sold on’ to other syndicates on route for the purpose of extortion.

Forced labour on route, including portering for brokers.

Food and water shortages, ill-equipped, overcrowded vehicles and unseaworthy boats.

Injury and death resulting from abuse and inhumane conditions.

Experiences of exploitation at the destination include:

Forced/abusive marriage including early marriage.

Commercial sexual exploitation.

Domestic servitude.

Debt-bondage.

Child labour.

Unsafe and unregulated work.

Unpaid wages/wage theft.

Rights violations and abuses by state security forces en route and at destination include:

Failure to provide humanitarian assistance to passengers on boats in distress.

‘Push-backs’ of boats into high seas and international/neighbouring country waters.

Denying passenger disembarkation.

Lack of access to asylum procedures or identification of trafficking victims and stateless people.

Detention on arrival, denial of access to

UNHCR in detention, detention for indefinite periods, inhumane detention conditions for example in Malaysia and India.

Refoulement to Myanmar following ‘rescue’ at sea, even where they are refugees registered in Bangladesh.

Arrest and detention en route through Myanmar often without access to legal assistance and with insufficient finances to secure release.

Torture and abuse in custody.

Lack of social support and re-integration services for separated children (often where adults are imprisoned), survivors of sexual violence, and other trafficking survivors.

Failure to provide household registration to returnees, leading to ongoing abuse and vulnerabilities.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Based on this paper’s findings, we recommend that anti-trafficking prevention and protection initiatives are more inclusive of stateless people and targeted to their specific needs and vulnerabilities. For example, initiatives to prevent trafficking should focus on ensuring access to basic rights and socio-economic rights for stateless people. Additionally, preventing trafficking in refugee and IDP situations, and protecting survivors of trafficking from refugee and IDP backgrounds, requires measures that are situated within a broader framework that factors in the need for protection not just from criminal syndicates, but also from perpetrating states and state actors. Accordingly, we recommend that relevant actors committed to preventing trafficking of stateless Rohingya and protecting Rohingya victims of trafficking:

Promote the right to work for stateless people and refugees; provide access to livelihoods and decent work.

Increase access for stateless refugees to durable solutions such as resettlement, integration, and safe and voluntary repatriation, including by providing specific pathways and routes to overcome the barriers encountered by stateless people.

For Rohingyas, promote their right to citizenship in Myanmar as an integral component of securing safe repatriations.

Provide access to safe and regular migration routes for stateless people (including through bypassing the role of the state of origin in proving identity)

Increase access to family reunion and reunification through safe and regular routes for stateless people, including by reducing the evidentiary requirements to establish family ties.

Promote access to civil registration, including birth registration, in countries of refuge with a view to providing pathways to regularise legal status and citizenship for those experiencing intergenerational statelessness.

For stateless children, provide access to formal education, accreditation, and development opportunities to enable them to access decent work in future and lift themselves out of the cycles of poverty and exploitation.

Incorporate refugee and statelessness protection into search and rescue operations including providing access to UNHCR, ensuring the right to apply for asylum and non-refoulement.

Improve the identification of refugees, victims of trafficking and stateless people and provide them with appropriate protection services.

Provide UNHCR with access to detention centres.

Related Content

Bangladesh : la transition est une « opportunité historique » pour une gouvernance ancrée sur l’etat de droit (onu), myanmar south east - emergency overview map: number of people displaced in south east since feb 2021 and remain displaced (as of 12 aug 2024), bangladesh: 2023 ifrc network annual report, jan-dec (16 august 2024), myanmar humanitarian update no. 40 | 16 august 2024.

Anirban Helping Trafficking Survivors in Bangladesh

Trafficking in Bangladesh

Women and children can be subject to recruitment fraud. Traffickers promise jobs to these vulnerable groups and exploit them in sex trafficking upon arrival at the location. According to the U.S. Department of State, 40% of Bangladeshi children become victims of sex trafficking victims and face exploitation abroad. Men are subject to forced labor. Forms of labor exploitation include discrepancies in wages or work hours, low or unpaid wages and fraudulent contracts. The U.S. Department of State report has shown passport retention, physical abuse and death due to inadequate protections in working environments.

The reason why these groups of people become vulnerable to exploitation stems from debt-based coercion, absence of adequate legal protection, lack of formal contracts and homelessness. Children become subject to hazardous forms of child labour and serve as collateral for their parents’ loans. Traffickers tempt rural people with alleged good employment opportunities and ultimately become victims of exploitation, the U.S. Department of State reports.

Helping Trafficking Survivors in Bangladesh

Anirban (the flame that never dies) , is Bangladesh’s first trafficking survivors’ group. Founded in 2011 with the help of Winrock International, an NGO based in the United States, and USAID, Anirban continues to actively advocate for the rights of trafficking survivors in Bangladesh. Survivors manage Anirban groups and take the lead in helping other trafficking survivors in Bangladesh to build self-confidence and identity. Under the USAID Fight Slavery and Trafficking activity (2021-2026), Winrock International has supported them to become a nationally registered, self-sustaining organization that continues to advocate for the needs of these survivors.

Anirban groups work toward changing public perception of these trafficking survivors in Bangladesh, especially the stigmatization of trafficked people as victims. Sessions and meetings take place in schools with civil society organizations, journalists, the local government and survivors. The main agenda for these sessions is to promote human rights, women’s rights and “safe migration days” for the people, according to Winrock International.

The Flame That Never Dies

Saiful Islam’s story continues to inspire many individuals. An active member at Anirban, Saiful uses his experience as a cautionary tale to spread awareness of the hardships of migrants. Due to being unable to find a job and subsequently being unable to support his family and falling victim to poverty, Saiful began looking for jobs abroad. He comes across a job in Singapore with a two-year contract and a monthly salary of $1,600, Winrock International reports.

The recruiters receive a lump sum amount from Saiful to emigrate to Singapore. Saiful experiences severe hardships in Singapore. He does not secure a published job, does not receive his salary and faces threats. It is only after one year abroad he can return to Bangladesh. Saiful’s woes do not end. He no longer has a job, has lost his family property and has no money.

Through the support from the Bangladesh Counter Trafficking-in-Persons project, funded by USAID and implemented by Winrock International, he was able to get back on his feet. As a member of Anirban, he conducts outreach efforts and spreads awareness about the risks of child marriage and its illegality in Bangladesh. In cases where families are in entanglements with traffickers or suspected traffickers, Saiful guides these communities to develop practical alternatives and solutions. He emphasizes the importance of education and helps trafficking survivors in Bangladesh with social and support programs. Saiful is a beacon of hope for the trafficking survivors in Bangladesh. He uses his funds to support migrants in Bangladesh. With Saiful’s funds, he has been able to help 13 vulnerable families and uplift them from having the same plight as himself, according to Winrock International.

Looking Forward

The work of Anirban continues to be exemplary. The focus on participatory action research ensures addressing the needs of victims of child marriage and human trafficking. The continuous promotion and conversation on safe migration and survivor reintegration within these communities contribute to an effective bottom-up systemic change. Survivor networks have been effective in leading changes in local conditions such as poverty, which drive vulnerable groups to the risk of exploitation.

– Caren Thomas

Caren is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and focuses on Good News and Technology for The Borgen Project.

Photo: Unsplash

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