Combating Human Trafficking
Challenges aplenty
Home minister tells two-day confce in capital
Amid downgrading status of Bangladesh in this year's US Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, a two-day long conference started yesterday at Bangabandhu International Conference Center, aiming to assess the role of the government in combating human trafficking.
The conference titled, “National Plan of Action (NPA) for Combating Human Trafficking 2015-2017: Achievements and Way Forward”, intends to assess the accomplishments of implementation of the NPA 2015 – 2017 and to develop an outline of the NPA 2018-2022 for Combating Human Trafficking.
At the opening session of the conference Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said Bangladesh still has a lot of challenges in preventing human trafficking, especially towards women and children. “Many people become victims of human trafficking easily due to a lack of proper education.”
“There are many ways to describe the term 'Trafficking-In-Persons' (TIP) but the end results are same – exploitation,” the home minister added.
The home minister said Bangladesh government has demonstrated strong commitment in preventing human trafficking. “Prevention and Suppression of Human Rights act 2012 is one of them.”
The government has been working with other countries for preventing TIP, said Asaduzzaman, adding that a new memorandum of understanding (MoU) had recently been signed with India on TIP victims' repatriation.
“Alongside this we have created a National Task Force on human trafficking to monitor these regularly,” he added.
Indicating this year's US TIP report, Janina Jaruzelski, the USAID mission director in Bangladesh, said it is an unfortunate and downgrading development for Bangladesh in combating human trafficking.
She urged cooperation and practical support from all stakeholders to combat human trafficking.
In this year's US TIP report published on June 27, Bangladesh was placed on the tier 2 watch list.
Mostafa Kamal Uddin, secretary of home ministry's public security division; Abu Saleh Sheikh Md Zahirul Haque, secretary of law ministry's law and justice division; Zillar Rahman, secretary of social welfare ministry; and Dr Nomita Halder, secretary in-charge of expatriates' welfare and overseas employment ministry; spoke among others.
United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Winrock International is organising the two-day conference at the initiative of the home affairs ministry.