<i>A shelter for trafficked girls in Jessore</i>

Dhaka Ahsania Mission offers a safe haven for trafficked girls who managed to escape their captors and return home.
At the shelter home near the Indo-Bangladesh border in Jessore, the girls find a safe place to stay, heal and recover as they prepare to rejoin the real world. They receive advice, regain their self-esteem and confidence, learn to sew, paint and build a new life.
Morzina (not a real name), a young girl living in the shelter says, 'My story is a simple one'. 'I got pregnant and had a child by a neighbour who promised to marry me. Shortly after giving birth to the child, the man refused to accept me as his wife. When my stepmother drove me out of house, I managed to find a place to live in but soon started to have financial problems. I could not cope and a woman, a distant relative, suggested that I try working abroad. I thought it might be a good solution for a while until I got back on my feet. The woman took me to Kolkata in India. To my utter astonishment, I found myself locked up in a house during the day and forced to go out with clients at night. Finally, a kind man helped me escape back to Bangladesh.'
'I am so mad at myself that I let myself befooled by all kinds of empty promises,' says Morzina. 'I believed all kinds of lies'.
Now I try to calm down and say to myself that I did what I did because I was desperate. I'm looking around me here in the shelter and I realise that I am the oldest the other girls are under 20; I could have been more mature'.
These days Morzina is trying to focus on the future. 'I'm very fearful of how I'll fare out in the real world but I want to do what's right for my baby,' she says.
Kulsum is another girl living in the shelter. She is only 15 years old. In her room there is a television (TV) set for entertainment. A psychiatric, a counsellor and a doctor take care of her and co-inmates round the clock.
Kulsum (not a real name) left home at age 12 and slept on the stairs of an apartment building. Looking for a job, she stumbled upon a woman who promised her a brighter future. In reality, the woman was part of a trafficking network and Kulsum was soon forced to become a sex worker.
'I became a drug addict,' she says, 'Because it helped me avoid thinking about what was happening to me.'
At age 14, Kulsum was given a passport and sent to Mumbai, India, where she was caught by police and sent back home.
Women have been hard hit by rising poverty in the country and found themselves with little opportunities in the labour market.
It is estimated that over 0.2 million women and children have already been trafficked out of Bangladesh through various routes to different countries, according to DAM sources.
Bangladeshi children are trafficked to Middle East where they are used as 'Jokey' in camel race in deserts.
Both Morzina and Kulsum are hoping to get back on their feet soon and reintegrate themselves in society.
'Rehabilitation of trafficked girls is a gigantic task', Dhaka Ahsania Mission president Kazi Rafiqul Alam says. 'We have to cope with the expenditures: maintenance, food, medication, non-formal education, vocational training, travel and clothes. Everything has to be paid for.' He appealed to the donor agencies and the government to come forward with generous help for the home which accommodates now 37 trafficked victims.
As many as 235 women and children have taken shelter at the home till date since its establishment at Vekutia in Jessore near Indo-Bangladesh border in 1998 under Child and Women Trafficking Prevention Programme (CWTP) of DAM, said assistant director (Human Rights & Social Justice) Advocate Shirin Naher. Of them, 158 inmates were rehabilitated and 101 others returned to their families, she said adding, rehabilitation programme consists of helping the inmates gain skills to earn a living and find a place in society.