A latest UN report has said that people displaced by the growing climate disasters in Bangladesh’s coastal region are vulnerable to human trafficking.
The Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2022 was launched in Dhaka, with officials from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the Bangladesh government in attendance.
Devastating cyclones and typhoons that hit Bangladesh has seen many people displaced from their homes and that has provided traffickers with an opportunity to organize large recruitment campaigns, the report said.
The report said that human traffickers are most active in the worldโs largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans and coastal areas of the southern Khulna district with 730 cases of human trafficking reported in 2020.
Globally, the number of convictions for trafficking offences fell by 27% in 2020 compared to the previous year, but in Bangladesh, it fell by 56%.
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The Covid-19 pandemic increased vulnerabilities to human trafficking and has undermined efforts to rescue victims and bring criminals to justice and fewer cases of trafficking for sexual exploitation were detected during the pandemic because public spaces were closed, and this may have pushed this type of trafficking into more concealed and less safe locations, making it more difficult to identify victims.
Based on trafficking cases detected between 2017 and 2021, the report covers 141 countries and provides an overview of patterns and flows of human trafficking at the global, regional, and national levels.
โWhile human traffickers are becoming more tech-savvy and are able to use technology successfully to their advantage, technology can also become an enhancing tool for the criminal justice system to detect, investigate and prosecute traffickers,โ said Marco Teixeira, the regional representative at UNODC Regional Office for South Asia.
UN Resident Coordinator in Bangladesh Gwyn Lewis said โWe must redouble our efforts to seriously and effectively address poverty and systemic inequalities with sustainable, inclusive responses. Those we leave behind are those we surrender to traffickers.โ
Md. Aminul Islam Khan, senior secretary of Bangladesh’s Ministry of Home Affairs, said that his government is doing everything possible to combat illegal human trafficking, including strengthening border security and legal drives by security forces.
Story was adapted from AA.
