Current Conditions: Trafficking in Persons

Trafficking is a Worldwide Problem

The United States defines trafficking in persons to include all of the conduct involved in forced and bonded labor as well as the trafficking of adults and children for commercial sexual exploitation. Every year, 800,000-900,000 women and children worldwide are believed to be trafficked and sold for sexual purposes. Adults become victims of labor trafficking when unscrupulous employers exploit workers. They are made more vulnerable by high rates of unemployment, poverty, crime, discrimination, corruption, political conflict, or cultural acceptance of the practice. Female victims of forced or bonded labor, especially women and girls in domestic servitude, are often sexually exploited as well. This trade results in unimaginable mental and physical abuse, loss of human dignity, and violation of countless human rights. It violates national and international laws against rape, torture, abduction and murder. It is a modern form of slavery.

Trafficking in Bangladesh

Bangladesh has been placed on the Tier 2 Watch List for a third consecutive year in the “2011 Trafficking in Persons Report” published by the US Government’s Department of State. Bangladesh is a source and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. Exact numbers on trafficking in Bangladesh are unavailable. Estimates cannot easily be tested because of the clandestine nature of trafficking. A significant share of Bangladesh’s trafficking victims consists of men recruited for work overseas with fraudulent employment offers who are subsequently exploited under conditions of forced labor or debt bondage. Bangladeshi children and women are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, and forced and bonded labor.

Facts about Trafficking

• Most trafficked women and girls range in age from 7-24, while boys range in age from 2-12.
• Many Bangladesh migrant laborers become victims of recruitment fraud and are forced to be bonded laborers.
• The three ways people are most commonly deceived by traffickers in Bangladesh are:
  • Sold by family members, a friend or neighbor;
  • Tricked into going to another country with the promise of a job or marriage; or
  • Kidnapped and forcefully taken away.
• Once oriented into the sex trade, a girl might find herself forced to service an average of ten clients a day.
• Those trafficked often live in horrible conditions and suffer from a full array of chronic infectious diseases, especially sexually transmitted diseases.
• Girls who manage to escape from the sex trade and return to Bangladesh are often not accepted back into their communities—they are considered "spoiled". They are forced to go underground, selling sex to survive.