Curbing woman and child trafficking

Otherwise we would continue to witness the rise in numbers of women and children being trafficked from all the South Asian countries. The information disclosed at the three-day long court sessions that nearly three and a half thousand children had gone missing from Bangladesh in last ten years and only 69 of them have been found is not only alarming but very frightening at the same time. It dawns on us only at such times that whether what we had was enough to curb such gross violation of human rights. As the members of the jury rightly pointed out that merely enacting a law is not enough, it's been proven time and again that strict laws with harsh punishments can not deter crimes committed against women and children.

And in this case, we think SAARC can play the most constructive role. Firstly, because the member countries have to realise that the nature of trafficking of women and children is almost the same in all the countries, the crisis is not limited within one country only and secondly, because of the similar pattern of women repression, all the countries can take a common strategy in order to control the ever increasing trend of crime against women. Raising educational standard at the grassroots level and making the law enforcing agencies more efficient and less corrupt should be the primary concern of that strategy. We join our voices and efforts with the South Asian Court for Women in raising awareness on discrimination against women in our society.

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