The Bangladesh government did not meet the minimum standards in several key areas to contain human smuggling, the US said in its 2021 Report on Trafficking in Persons.
The government has, however, demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared to the previous reporting period, considering the impact of the Covid pandemic on its anti-trafficking capacity, and therefore Bangladesh remained on Tier 2, according to the report.
The US observed that convictions in cases over trafficking had decreased while law enforcement continued to deny credible reports of official complicity in trafficking, forced labour and sex trafficking and did not demonstrate efforts to identify victims to ensure justice, according to the report released by US secretary of state Antony Blinken from Washington on Thursday night.
Home minister Asaduzzaman Khan said that steps taken for improvement in the trafficking situation ‘was not reflected’ in the US TIP report.
The Bangladesh government continued to allow recruiting agencies to charge high recruitment fees to migrant workers and did not consistently address illegally operating recruitment sub-agents, leaving workers vulnerable to traffickers, according to the report.
Official complicity in human trafficking, trafficking-related corruption and impunity for traffickers remained serious concerns, continuing to inhibit law enforcement action during the year, the report said, adding that the government was reluctant to acknowledge or investigate such claims.
In registered brothels, some police charged bribes to ignore abuse within the establishments, to forego checking for the required documentation that each individual was older than 18 and to procure fraudulent documents for girls as young as 10 years old, said the report.
Some labour attachés at Bangladesh missions abroad, local politicians, judges and the police allegedly sought bribes from victims and their families to pursue cases.
Observers complained that some officials from district employment and manpower offices allegedly facilitated human trafficking while some traffickers in rural areas had political connections that enabled them to operate with impunity.
Sections of observers alleged that some local politicians convinced victims to accept payment from recruitment sub-agents to not report fraudulent or exploitative labour recruitment actions to the police.
Other observers reported that some police conducted slow and flawed investigations to allow traffickers to evade punishment, including when suspects were fellow officers.
Because a number of government officials, including some parliamentarians, maintained close ties to foreign employment agencies there were concerns that such officials had conflicts of interest in approving migrant-friendly practices, such as prosecution of abusive recruitment agencies and increasing protections for migrant workers, the report said.
The government reportedly screened individuals for trafficking before arresting them and as law enforcement did not uniformly employ standard operating procedures to identify trafficking victims among vulnerable populations, including women in commercial sex, law enforcement may have penalised sex trafficking victims for unlawful acts their traffickers compelled them to commit, according to the report.
Traffickers exploited some Bangladeshi men, women and children who migrated to work abroad.
Some recruitment agencies, agents and employers also committed recruitment fraud, including contract switching.
This included promising women and children jobs and exploiting them in forced labour and sex trafficking upon arrival, the report said, adding that some traffickers falsified identity documents to make children appear older than 18 to send them abroad.
Child sex trafficking remained widespread as experts estimated that 20,000 children were both growing up in and were exploited in commercial sex in Bangladeshi brothels, the report added.
Several women and girls reported that traffickers preyed on them and sold them to brothels after the women fled abusive child marriages.
Traffickers often used debt-based coercion to compel workers into labour, exploiting an initial debt assumed by a worker as part of the employment terms.
Traffickers forced adults and children to work in shrimp and fish processing industries, aluminium, tea and garment factories, brick kilns, dry fish production and ship-breaking, the report went on.
Traffickers coerced street children into criminality or forced them to beg while begging ringmasters sometimes maimed children to increase earnings, it said.
Traffickers forced children, especially in border areas, to produce and transport drugs, particularly Yaba pills.
Traffickers exploited Rohingya men, women and children, who were Myanmar nationals, from refugee camps in sex and labour trafficking both within Bangladesh and transnationally.
International organisations alleged that some Bangladeshi officials facilitated trafficking of Rohingyas, including accepting bribes from traffickers to allow access to camps.
However, the government maintained some efforts to prevent trafficking, including operating vigilance task force against corrupt recruitment agencies, travel agencies and sub-agents who operated in rural locations and connected prospective migrant workers to licenced employment agencies, the report pointed out.
These efforts included initiating further prosecutions, particularly of labour traffickers, beginning to operate its trafficking tribunals and collaborating with foreign governments on a transnational trafficking case, it said.
The government also opened an investigation into and the parliament revoked the seat of a lawmaker involved in bribing a Kuwaiti official to fraudulently send more than 20,000 Bangladeshi migrant workers to that country.
The US authorities recommended that the Bangladesh government required increasing prosecutions and convictions for trafficking offences, particularly of labour traffickers and complicit government officials, while respecting the due process.
Taking steps to eliminate recruitment fees charged to workers by licenced labour recruiters and ensuring that employers pay recruitment fees is a need, said the report.
A full compliance of registration requirements for recruitment agents and sub-agents, improvement in quality of pre-departure training for migrant workers and establishing standard guidelines on investigating transnational trafficking cases are also essential, the US report added.
