Editorial
The business of human trafficking
Time for a global approach to tackle it
We welcome Bangladesh's stand on trafficking and child labour in a meeting of the UN Global Initiative to Fight Trafficking held recently in Austria. It has helped frustrate the efforts of an international lobby to paint Bangladesh as a country where child labour, exploitation of workers and human trafficking are rampant.
However, the situation regarding human trafficking in Bangladesh is a matter where we cannot feel self-satisfied, even if we have graduated from tier 1 to tier 2 in the list occurring in the "Traffic in Persons" Report, published by the US State Department annually. This indicates an improvement in the anti-trafficking effort of Bangladesh.
Our somewhat better ranking is hardly a solace for those thousands of women and children who are either lured or coerced or forced into virtual slavery across international borders. There are those that, in seeking employment abroad, choose the shortest path to greener pastures, only to find themselves duped and forced into immoral acts. And even when there is legal or safe migration, many of our workers, particularly female workers in certain countries of the Middle East, find themselves in conditions of involuntary servitude having to face restrictions on movement, endure non-payment of wages, and physical and sexual abuse.
It is futile to split hairs on the actual number of persons that are trafficked across the border and beyond, annually. Admittedly, there has been marginal improvement in this regard because of the corrective measures employed by the government like raising awareness, but much is left to be desired, particularly bringing to account those agencies that indulge in fraudulent recruitment and enforcing criminal penalties on them.
While there are many aspects of this problem, economic, legal and social, in the immediate term our imperative should be to develop a regional network in order that the international borders are made impervious to the human traffickers.
While human trafficking can only be checked through removing the causes of it at home, in the era of globalisation it stands to reason that more free and wider movement of labour should be encouraged i.e. allowing safe and legal migration by the developed countries, to stem a phenomenon that has come to be epitomized as modern day slavery.
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