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Almost 20,000 people are trafficked every year from Bangladesh because human trafficking has turned out to be the third most lucrative but illicit business in the world after arms and drug trafficking.
South East Asia and South Asia are home to the largest numbers of internationally trafficked persons estimated to be 2,25,000 and 1,50,000 respectively.
Pornchai Suchitta, country representative in Bangladesh of the United Nations Population Fund, said this while releasing the state of World Population Report 2006 in the city Wednesday.
In 2005 there were nearly 200 million international migrants in the world of which 95 million were female migrants (49.6 per cent). And Bangladesh had been the ninth largest human exporting country.
Along with Bangladesh some other countries including China, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand have also been the safe haven for human trafficking
There are 15,000 Bangladeshi women employed in Dubai and Bangladeshi women working in the Middle East sends home 72 per cent of their earnings on average.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that 2.45 million trafficking victims are toiling in exploitative conditions worldwide. An estimated 6,00,000 to 8,00,000 women and children are trafficked across international borders each year and among them, 80 per cent are women and girls.
The above-mentioned regi-ons contribute one half and two thirds of all the documented immigrants and refugees to the international migration stream.
The report shows that most of the female migrants are engaged as domestic workers, carers and nurses of the sick, the children and elderly people.
The report also disclosed that almost half of all the migrants were from Asia in 2005 and throughout the 1990s many of the women migrants worked in unregulated sex industry fuelled by dire poverty, discrimination and unemployment in Asia.
Reports of abuse and exploitation come from all over the world, domestic workers have been assaulted, raped, overworked. Many had been denied pay, rest days, privacy and access to medical services; verbally and psychologically abused and sometimes had their passports withheld.
One third of the global trafficking in women and children occurs in South East Asia. The ILO estimates that the traffickers earn US$32 billion every year of which half the amount is generated from industrial countries.
Migration, when well-managed, can be beneficial, only when the contributions of women are acknowledged as women who migrate experience double discrimination, as migrants and as women.
Among others, Nurul Ameen, assistant representative of the UNFPA and Shahidul Haque, regional representative of International Organisation for Migration were also present.