Bangladesh is a source and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor and forced prostitution. 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 debt bondage. It also includes the trafficking of children – both boys and girls – within Bangladesh for commercial sexual exploitation, bonded labor, and forced labor. Some children are sold into bondage by their parents, while others are induced into labor or commercial sexual exploitation through fraud and physical coercion. Women and children from Bangladesh are also trafficked .
Background Bangladeshi men and women migrate willingly to Germany, Malaysia, Norway, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the United Kingdom, the United States, and other countries for work, often under legal and contractual terms. Most Bangladeshis who seek overseas employment through legal channels rely on the 724 recruiting agencies belonging to the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA). These agencies are legally permitted to charge workers up to $1,235 and place workers in low-skilled jobs typically paying between $110 and $150 per month. According to NGOs, however, many workers are charged upwards of $6,000 for these services. A recent Amnesty International report on Malaysia indicated Bangladeshis spend more than three times the amount of recruitment fees paid by other migrant workers recruited for work in Malaysia. NGOs report many Bangladeshi migrant laborers are victims of recruitment fraud, including exorbitant recruitment fees often accompanied by fraudulent representation of terms of employment. The ILO has concluded high recruitment fees increase vulnerability to forced labor among transnational migrant workers. Women typically work as domestic servants; some find themselves in situations of forced labor or debt bondage where they face restrictions on their movements, non-payment of wages, threats, and physical or sexual abuse. Some Bangladeshi women working abroad are subsequently trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation. Bangladeshi children and adults are also trafficked internally for commercial sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, and bonded labor. Recent reports indicate many brothel owners and pimps addict Bangladeshi girls to steroids, with harmful side effects, to make them more attractive to clients; the drug is reported to be used by 90 percent of females between 15 and 35 in Bangladeshi brothels.
The process of trafficking through various routes, especially sea route:
Bangladeshi people are trafficked through various routes, like sea, air, land etc. 2.5 lakh Bangladeshi fortune-seekers have been lured into the trap of trafficking through sea route in last 8 years. Emran Hossain and Mohammad Ali Zinnat with Martin Swapan Pandey mutually wrote an article in the Daily Star named “Slave Trade Booms in Dark Triangle”. In this article, there was a picture drawn where seven steps of trafficking in sea route were mentioned. Cox's Bazar especially teknaf town is the main sea route for smuggling Bangladeshis and Rohingyas towards Southeast Asian countries. Each victim of trafficking has to pay a lot of taka in every step which can be estimated between Tk. 2,50,000 and Tk. 4,50,000. During traveling through the Bay of Bengal, a fortune-seeker has to stay 25 to 30 days, sometimes two months in a small fishing boat. Many passengers die from dehydration or starvation in the ship and their bodies are tossed into the ocean. UNHCR estimates that in 2014 alone, 750 people died at sea on this route. The boats land in Thailand. The survivors of the boat are detained in a jungle camp. A big amount between Tk. 2 lakh and 3.5 lakh is claimed from the victims as ransom . The detained persons are not sent to country of destination, especially Malaysia if they fail to pay ransom claimed. If anyone fails to pay the ransom, he is used as slave or killed by the traffickers. The dead bodies are either tossed into the ocean or buried in Thai Jungle. 26 bodies were found in Sadao district, Songkhla province of Thailand on 2 May 2015 . Thai authority suspected that they were trafficked migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar. Many jobseekers are victimized after reaching the country of destination by robbing the passport and visa of that country and they are victimized of forced labor by the traffickers. The victim can do nothing against the traffickers fearing the arrest as illegal migrant. Some fenceless women are trafficked to India, Pakistan, or Nepal crossing the border for sexual exploitation. Some women are smuggled to the Middle East as house-keepers, but actually they are victimized of trafficking for the purpose of prostitution.
The country of destination for trafficking from Bangladesh:
Almost 10 million Bangladeshi migrants work all over the world. Among them 90% stay in Middle Eastern countries , like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Lebanon, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt etc. Many Bangladeshi trafficking victims including men and women are victimized in those countries either for sexual exploitation, or for forced labor. Bangladeshis are lured to go to those countries, because some successful Bangladeshi migrants stay there. A number of Bangladeshi women including girls under 18 and children are trafficked to India, Pakistan, and some other South Eastern countries including Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand whether for sexual exploitation, forced labor, or removal of organs. From 2011, almost all Middle Eastern countries closed to appoint workers from Bangladesh. Therefore, they are lured into trap to go to South Eastern countries and they are victimized of trafficking.
Bangladesh does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. The government has continued to address the sex trafficking of women and children. Despite these significant efforts, the government did not demonstrate evidence of increased efforts to prosecute and convict labor trafficking offenders, particularly those responsible for the fraudulent recruitment of Bangladeshi workers for the purpose of forced labor overseas. Similarly it did not demonstrate increased efforts to prevent the forced labor of Bangladeshi workers overseas through effective controls on high recruitment fees and other forms of fraudulent recruitment; therefore, Bangladesh is placed on the Tier 3 Watch List for the second consecutive year. Some government officials and members of civil society continue to believe the forced labor and debt bondage of Bangladeshi workers abroad was not considered labor trafficking, but rather employment fraud perpetrated on irregular migrants.
In December 2011, the government put into place an anti-trafficking law which took into account the missing legislative prohibitions pertaining to the trafficking of men. With the newly implemented anti-trafficking action plan more prosecutions were made, but the number of convictions declined in comparison to previous years. The National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking for 2012-2014 was implemented in January 2011 by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and in 2012, the Human Trafficking Deterrence and Suppression Act (HTDSA) was drafted by the government, but due to the lack of adequate law enforcement efforts, the trafficking of migrant workers continued to occur in Bangladesh.
By 2015, Bangladesh government implementation of the 2012 Preven
tion and Suppression of Human Trafficking Act (PSHTA) was still not finalized. Also, that year nine government- operated shelters took in 2,621 victims. Between 2014 and 2015, there was a significant increase in the number of prosecutions, from 12 in 2014 to 265 in 2015. The government also launched the national action plan for 2015-2017, but was once again not capable of finalizing the PSHTA before the 2016 reporting period came to an end. In 2017, the 2012 PSHTA was finalized and implement, showing significant efforts from the Bangladesh government. By the end of the reporting year however, the government's investigation, prosecution, and conviction numbers decreased in comparison to previous years.
U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in "Tier 2 Watchlist" in 2017.
Bangladesh remained on the Tier 2 watchlist for 3 consecutive years and was upgraded to Tier 2 after the 2020 reporting year.
Prosecution The Government of Bangladesh did not provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat sex trafficking or forced labor during the reporting period. Bangladesh prohibits the trafficking of women and children for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation or involuntary servitude under the Repression of Women and Children Act of 2000 (amended in 2003), and prohibits the selling and buying of a Prostitution of children child under the age of 18 for prostitution in Articles 372 and 373 of its penal code. Prescribed penalties under these sex trafficking statutes range from 10 years’ imprisonment to the death penalty. The most common sentence imposed on convicted sex traffickers is life imprisonment. These penalties are very stringent and commensurate with those prescribed for other serious crimes, such as rape. Article 374 of Penal code of Bangladesh|Bangladesh's penal code prohibits forced labor, but the prescribed penalties of imprisonment for up to one year or a fine are not sufficiently stringent.
During the reporting period, the government obtained the convictions of 32 sex trafficking offenders and sentenced 24 of them to life imprisonment; eight were sentenced to lesser prison terms. This is a slight decrease from the 37 convictions obtained in 2008. The government did not report the conviction of any labor trafficking offenders. The government prosecuted 68 cases involving suspected sex trafficking offenders and conducted 26 investigations, compared with 90 prosecutions and 134 investigations during the previous year. Forty-nine prosecutions resulted in acquittals; however, under Bangladeshi law the term "acquittal" can also refer to cases in which the parties settled out of court or witnesses did not appear in court. Despite administrative actions taken against labor recruitment agencies involved in fraudulent recruitment and possible human trafficking, the government did not report any criminal prosecutions or convictions for labor trafficking offenses. The Bangladeshi judicial system's handling of sex trafficking cases continued to have a large backlog and delays caused by procedural loopholes. Most sex trafficking cases are prosecuted by 42 special courts for the prosecution of crimes of violence against women and children in 32 districts of the country; those courts are generally more efficient than regular trial courts.
In 2015, the government reported the investigation of 181 sex and 265 labor trafficking cases, compared to the 146 sex and 12 labor trafficking cases of 2014. Under the 2012 PSHTA, 481 alleged traffickers were prosecuted in 2015, in which 4 were prosecuted. The number of investigated trafficking cases decreased in the 2017 reporting year compared to the numbers reported in 2016, only 122 sex and 168 labor trafficking cases were investigated.