Peer Leaders Module: Preventing Human Trafficking and Ensuring Safe Migration

Human trafficking is the most vicious and one of the fastest-growing criminal activities in the world. Bangladesh is considered a source country for the smuggling and human trafficking of women, men, and children for coerced labor and sex work. Skilled, unskilled, and low-skilled labor migration has boosted our national income and played an important role in the overall development of our families. Migration is now an aspirational livelihood for ordinary Bangladeshi people. Research has made it clear, though, that while Bangladeshi people are highly interested in going abroad for work, accurate and essential information about these opportunities is not widely available. As a result, middlemen and frauds have the run of this growing potential sector. Stories of people falling victim to fraud and losing everything to brokers are popping up more and more frequently—many who try to migrate become prey to human trafficking. There is only one way to prevent these problems: spread awareness among people who are interested in migrating abroad, inform them about the right way to migrate, and what they should do, and counsel them, so they do not fall victim to fraud once they are abroad. Over the last two decades, various government and non-governmental organizations have been working at different stages of the process. Despite that, the rate of failed migration due to a lack of appropriate information is still alarmingly high.