20,000 Bangladeshi women, children smuggled a year

Despite efforts to check human trafficking at various levels, between 10,000 and 20,000 women and children are trafficked from Bangladesh every year, said Home Minister Altaf Hossain Chowdhury yesterday.

Expressing concerns at the upward trend of such trafficking, the home minister told the inaugural session of a three-day regional workshop on human trafficking in the city that traffickers were not getting punished in the South Asian region.

Addressing the South Asia Regional Workshop for Sharing Information Education and Communication (IEC) tools and Media Advocacy Initiatives at the BRAC Centre Inn as chief guest the minister noted, poverty, illiteracy, natural calamities, lack of awareness, polygamy, gender discrimination and wars, among other factors, were responsible for human trafficking.

"Human trafficking is a million-dollar trade in human misery," said Chandi Joshi, South Asia Programme Director of United Nations Development Fund for Women (Unifem) at the workshop participated NGO and media representatives from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Jointly organised by Unifem, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and Action against Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Children (ATSEC) the workshop aims at creating awareness of the government, NGOs and media on the magnitude of the trafficking in the region and to establish higher recognition of women's rights.

Naivety and denial are two basic reasons behind human trafficking, said the mission Director of USAID Bangladesh Gene V George. Now is the time we need to move beyond mere awareness raising against trafficking to prevention through effective mechanism.

"Human trafficking is a big business and usually powerful people are involved in it," said the ATSEC Regional Co-ordinator Enamul Huq Chowdhury, "Trafficking has thrown a big challenge to humanity."

He urged the government for proper execution of existing legislation to combat trafficking.