Sex Trade Behind the Scene of Women and Girls Trafficking: A Case of Bangladesh
Mohammad Ashraful Alam | September 22 | 1:30 - 2:30 PM | Room 2584
Human trafficking, along with drugs and weapons have been reported as the top three largest organized crime industries in the world. It is estimated that one to two million women and children are trafficked annually around the world for the purposes of forced labor, commercial sexual exploitation, or domestic servitude. The main objective of this study was to explore the picture of sexual exploitation. The study showed that the sex trade is becoming very popular to traffickers because of the expanding commercial sex industry in Asia and male client’s preference for young women and virgin girls to avoid HIV infection (UNIFEM). Traffickers made an estimated $7 -12 billion in profits annually, whereas the human trafficking industry is $32 billion internationally (UN, 2008). The study observed that about one million ‘unreported’ Bangladeshi women were trafficked in Pakistan and 300,000 Bangladeshi children have been trafficked to the brothels of India over a period of time (Star October 8, 2000). Over the last five years at least 13,220 children were reportedly trafficked out of the country, 4,500 women and children from Bangladesh are trafficked to Pakistan annually (UNIFEM) and 50,000 Bangladeshi girls are trafficked to India every year through 4,222 kilometers border areas (Biswas, 2015). As a Tier 2 country, Bangladesh is a transit and a destination country for women and girls forced into prostitution. Bangladeshi women and girls are especially trafficked to India, Pakistan and the Middle East (TIP Report, 2015) using Dhaka- Mumbai-Karachi-Dubai as the main trafficking route (Biswas, 2015).