BANGLADESH has made some tangible progress in preventing human trafficking, but much more needs to be done to contain trafficking-related crimes. Statistics of recent years show that Bangladesh faces a significant and complex human trafficking problem, with an estimated 1.2 million people living in ‘modern slavery’ in 2021. For six consecutive years, Bangladesh has remained in Tier 2 of the US state department’s Trafficking in Persons Report. This middle ground is neither a failure nor a success and should serve as a wake-up call for policymakers. The 2025 report acknowledges that Bangladesh has taken positive steps in training frontline officials in trauma-informed victim care, identifying and referring more victims to services and adopting a formal national referral mechanism. In 2024, however, the number of traffickers who faced investigation, prosecution and conviction declined. The government seeks to say that special anti-trafficking tribunals could not operate for over three months because of the July uprising, which caused a delay in the legal proceedings. The complicity of the law enforcement agencies and others concerned, which was also mentioned in earlier reports, continued as no radical steps were taken to eliminate trafficking rackets.
The report highlights the pervasive nature of internal trafficking, including forced child labour and sex trafficking, which continues unabated. The report further criticises Bangladesh for its weak victim protection and reintegration systems. Survivors of trafficking often find themselves re-victimised because of the absence of sustainable rehabilitation programmes. Labour inspectors, particularly those tasked with monitoring the vast informal sector, remain severely under-resourced. In effect, the government relies on under-funded structures to address a crime that thrives in secrecy and informality. The plight of migrant workers is equally alarming. Despite decades of advocacy, high recruitment fees remain legal, pushing countless Bangladeshis into debt bondage and leaving them vulnerable to abuse abroad. The government’s failure to abolish the predatory fees is not a matter of bureaucratic delay. It is a deliberate policy choice that prioritises remittance flows over human dignity. The Rohingya refugees, too, remain highly vulnerable, with inadequate protection and little accountability for their exploitation. Evidence also emerges that climate-related disasters are becoming a cause of human trafficking as criminal gangs exploit a growing number of displaced people.
In the light of the facts, the government should take urgent steps to expedite the legal process and give exemplary punishment to those involved in the human trafficking. It should expand anti-trafficking tribunals, eliminate recruitment fees and adopt a fully resourced national plan of action. In addition, trafficked victims who managed to return to Bangladesh should be properly rehabilitated and compensated with adequate psychosocial counselling and social support. Anything less could condemn Bangladesh to mediocrity in the battle against human trafficking for another year and, possibly, another decade.
