Human trafficking is like a societal cancer, tarnishes country’s image

Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen on Thursday human trafficking is like a societal cancer that not only jeopardises the lives of individuals but also the prospects of their families and tarnish the image of the country.

Bangladeshis are one of the top ten nationals who crossed the Mediterranean during 2014-2022, and such statistics goes against the achievements of Bangladesh, he said.

“We cannot let some irresponsible individuals slapping on the face of all the people who are working hard to help develop the country,” the Foreign Secretary said.

He made the remarks while interacting with journalists at a day-long workshop on Media and Migration organised by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in cooperation with Diplomatic Correspondents Association, Bangladesh (DCAB) at Amari Dhaka.

Former Foreign Secretary Md Shahidul Haque, EU Ambassador to Bangladesh Charles Whiteley, IOM Bangladesh Chief of Mission Abdusattor Esoev and DCAB President Rezaul Karim Lotus also spoke on the occasion.

According to official estimates Bangladeshis were found to be the highest number of irregular migrants reaching the shores of Italy in the first six months this year. Of the 28,405 irregular migrants, there were a total of 4,606 Bangladeshis, who were followed by Egyptians, Tunisians, and Afghans. They take risky boat journeys in the Mediterranean to reach Europe and many of them die.

About 12 million Bangladeshis work abroad and send home about $20 billion a year, making immense contribution to the country's economy. However, high recruitment cost coupled with weak migration governance is a major problem for Bangladesh, official figure says.

“We need to empower our workers with skills. If not, there are more scope for abuses,” Masud Bin Momen said, calling on journalists to play role in creating awareness and policy change.

He said there were requests from some Bangladeshis in a few European countries for lowering their ages in passports, as migrants under 18 in those countries are provided special privileges.

“However, we cannot do it because, though we know it can help some individuals, it will in the long run affect the larger Bangladeshi community. The ranking of our passport may also go down,” Momen said.

He said Italy and Greece are hiring workers from Bangladesh and more European countries may follow their examples. Therefore, malpractice by a few individuals cannot jeopardize the overall improvement of the sector.

Former Foreign Secretary Md Shahidul Haque said while there are socio-economic factors for migration, climate change and conflicts are becoming major reasons for migration recently.

Bangladesh has played important role at the international level, especially in having the Global Compact on Migration in place, a UN-led global deal, but migration governance at home is not in a very good shape, he said.

EU Ambassador to Bangladesh Charles Whiteley said EU is working on finding legal migration pathways for Bangladeshis, alongside other nationalities.

It has been supporting and will continue to do so to Bangladesh to improve migration governance and reintegration efforts as it is doing under the Standard Operating Procedures now under the project PROTTASHA.

DCAB President, who is also the Executive Editor of the Daily Sun, in his speech said over 281 million people are now considered international migrants. “And we have more than 13 million migrants who are greatly contributing to the national development.”

He said migration has come to constitute an increasingly important area of states' engagement with one another, with bilateral multilateral strategies including the promotion or discouragement of bilateral migratory flows.

“If we can strengthen our diplomatic efforts at abroad, we will be able to reduce the vulnerability of migrants,” he said adding that as media plays big role to ensure safe orderly and regular migration, this workshop will help us to know the migration management in detail.