20,000 Bangladeshis Being Trafficked Every Year 

About 20,000 persons are being trafficked to different countries every year from Bangladesh.

Bangladeshi women working in the Middle East sent home 72 per cent of their earnings on average.

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) disclosed that at CIRDAP Auditorium in the city while the publishing the 'State of the World Population Report' yesterday.

Pornchai Suchitta, UNFPA Representative and Md Nurul Ameen, Assistant Representative in Bangladesh addressed the function while Md Shahidul Haque, Regional Representative of International Organisation for Migration (IOM), delivered speech on 'migration and trafficking'.

The speakers said Bangladesh is one of the nine largest manpower-exporting countries along with China, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Thailand. These countries contribute between one half and two thirds of all documented immigrations and refugees to the international migration stream.

The focus of this year is on 'Women and International Migration'. The report was published simultaneously in all the capitals of the world, they added.

One third of labour migrants within the region are women, the majority of whom work in domestic services or entertainment often not covered by the national labour laws. Throughout 1990s, many of these women also ended up working in the largely unregulated sex industry. The industry was fueled by dire poverty, discrimination and unemployment in Asia, they also added.

Speakers further said that Bangladesh Government data indicated that less than 1 per cent of the immigrants between 1991 and 2003 were women. There are about 10,000 to 15,000 Bangladeshi women are employed in Dubai. Certain bans and restrictions were enforced on female migration by countries like Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan in order to protect women. Bangladesh lifted the ban in 2005.

One third of the global trafficking in women and children occurs in the South East Asia, according to the estimation by International Labour Organisation (ILO), they added. : (New Nation0 (Indian Network for Combat Trafficking)