Human trafficking is an organized crime that infringes a person’s right to live with freedom and dignity. The magnitude of the multifaceted crimes under the umbrella term of ‘human trafficking’ is truly alarming. Often analogized with modern day slavery, these crimes are carried out both within and beyond national boundaries.

In general sense, the act of any person being transited illegally from one place to another is considered human trafficking. Because of the purposes behind these transitions, often they are separated from each other. Trafficking someone forcefully on the purpose of using them for profits is often recognised as ‘trafficking in person’. Article 3, paragraph (a) of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons explains that to call a transition an illegal trafficking, three major identification must be done through analysis of its:

1. Process,

     2. Means and

       3. Exploitation.

The process often includes transfer or harbouring, while the means must have use of force or any other form of coercion or threats along with abuse of power and vulnerability for the purpose of exploitation. This exploitation may include prostitution, forced labour or slavery, and even removal of organs.

Human traffickers never regard their victims as humans, rather as commodities to trade, which is the ultimate degradation for any human being. Therefore, trafficking of human beings is both the cause and consequence of serious violations of human rights in a wide scale.

Ironically, even in this modern age, whole humanity is being regularly haunted by this horrendous evil. Human trafficking has become such a crucial issue that every nation in the world is concerned about the security of its own nationals. Though clandestine in nature, human trafficking has become the second most profitable business after drug dealings.

Statistics show that around 8 lac people around the world fall victim of cross-border trafficking each year, of whom 80% is female. At domestic level, this percentage is more alarming. In case of domestic trafficking, the victims are mostly forced to work in brick kilns and shrimp industries as a part of debt bondage.

In Bangladesh, human trafficking is now considered as one of the major challenges towards national development and human rights protection. A recent study by the Asian Development Bank reveals that around 5,000-10,000 people are being illegally transited to other countries from Bangladesh every year. Very recently, more than 130 victims have been rescued from human traffickers in a single province of Thailand of whom the majority were Bangladeshis. Major reasons behind this enhanced rate of trafficking are:

1. Geographical location: It is easier for the traffickers to use Bangladesh-India border to get access to the villages close to national borders. They mainly use 16 South-Western districts for this crime. Marine route of the Bay of Bengal is also being frequently used for human trafficking in the countries of Malaysia and Thailand.

2. Loose or sometimes intentional lack of observation: Negligence or lack of observation on the border patrolling often aids the perpetrators to enter our country easily. Both people from inside and outside of the border are often found involved in this illicit transportation.

3. Economic vulnerability: When poor people living in rural areas are offered lucrative jobs, they grasp these offers desperately. Failing to detect the frauds, these victims get transported through illegal migration process. Sometimes victims are kidnapped without any offers for money as well. In most cases, these transferring processes end up in the most agonising form of human rights violation.

4. Impassiveness of the authority: In some regions the criminals are encouraged to continue because of impassive authorities. In most cases, proper steps are not taken to prevent the offences unless a large number of trafficking takes place in a noticeably short time span. In September 3, 2011 the daily Prothom Alo revealed that around 200 people sold their kidneys due to extreme poverty, although it is strictly prohibited under Section 9 of the Bangladesh Organ Transplant Act, 1999. This information only unveils the fact that such predicament is not possible without at least a little aid from government officials.

Some common purposes of human trafficking in Bangladesh are trafficking for forced labour, sexual exploitation and domestic servitude. Mostly, women and children are the victims of this ruthless crime, but men fall prey to this crime too. And the most concerning fact is, in most cases, children are being trafficked for organs and race jockeying to middle Eastern countries. Although this practice has been banned by United Arab Emirates in 2002, there is still a large number of children used as jockeys in the Persian gulf region.

Bangladesh, along with its regional partners, is trying to address the issue. But because of the complex and covert nature of this crime, it has been hard to keep track of and prevent its repetitive occurrence. Still, steps are being taken to stop human trafficking from both inside and cross border in Bangladesh.

To address the cases of trafficking specifically, a new law has been introduced namely the Human Trafficking Deterrence and Suppression Act 2012. This law prohibits all kinds of forceful transition of any human being in both immigration and emigration level as a punishable offence. Punishments under the act are different depending on the severity of the crime. It also made provisions to form a tribunal for speedy trials which are to be resolved within 180 working days. Another important feature of this act is that it allows repatriation as well as rehabilitation of the victims basing on their nationality.

Recently, Bangladesh has been placed as Tier-2 country by Trafficking in Person Report 2014. Tier placement is a system introduced by the US State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Their job is to rank governments based on their perceived efforts to acknowledge and combat human trafficking. Being in Tier-2 means Bangladesh is making significant efforts to comply with the necessary standards to resist human trafficking.

A state may not be able to fully provide a person with his right to education; he may have to compromise with his accommodation or the way he lives. We cannot but bitterly accept that this is more or less true in all developing countries like ours. But the last thing any person deserves is being stripped off of his dignity as a human being and live an inhumane life.

This is not just the state’s duty to secure the dignity of its people. It is important to remember that it is a duty of everyone to contribute to save the victims and stay very aware so that human trafficking can be prevented. We should not take it lightly or shrug it off as another ‘casual civic duty’. Because this is what we owe to this underprivileged, vulnerable people who are prone to victimization. And we owe it not just as a citizen but as a human being to another human.

Tanzina Islam thanks Emraan Azad, Preeti Kona and Farah Sonda for their comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article.

Citations:

Tanzina Islam, “Human Trafficking and Bangladesh: A Curse to be Lifted”  (DHLR Blog, 18 October 2014) http://www.dhakalawreview.org/blog/2014/10/human-trafficking-426

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Comments to: Human Trafficking and Bangladesh: A Curse to be Lifted
  • October 18, 2014

    Living an easy life we often forget how much cruelty still resides…Thanks for the reminder!

    Reply
  • November 2, 2014

    Thank you for shedding some light on the gruesomeness of human trafficking.It was very informative and hopefully help create awareness among people at least to some extent.

    Reply

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