Human trafficking: special tribunals to ensure speedy trials in Bangladesh
Over 4,700 human trafficking cases are now pending, Law Minister Anisul Huq said, expecting that the tribunals, once set up, will try the human traffickers to check such incidents.
Written by Daily Star
Updated: February 17, 2020
The government is going to set up seven special tribunals for speedy trials in human trafficking cases as Bangladesh faces risks of US sanctions for not doing enough in combatting the heinous crime.
“Seven special tribunals will be established in divisional cities. They will start functioning from March this year,” Law Minister Anisul Huq told The Daily Star on Wednesday.
The tribunals will surely help speed up the trial process of the human trafficking cases, he said.
Over 4,700 human trafficking cases are now pending, Anisul Huq said, expecting that the tribunals, once set up, will try the human traffickers to check such incidents.
The development comes after Bangladesh was ranked in Tier 2 Watch List for the last three consecutive years in the US Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report.
As per the US law, Bangladesh is not eligible to remain in Tier 2 Watch List this year, said the US Embassy in Dhaka in an email response to The Daily Star on January 20.
“Either Bangladesh must show significant and increased efforts to meet the minimum standards to eliminate trafficking in persons and achieve a Tier 2 ranking or risk an automatic downgrade to Tier 3,” it mentioned.
Any country ranked in Tier 3 is subject to severe restrictions and even full curtailment of non-humanitarian, non-trade-related assistance as set forth in Section 110(d)(1) of the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), it said.
Additionally, the US president may also withhold funding for Bangladesh government officials or employees for participation in educational and cultural exchanges.
The president can also instruct the US executive director of each multilateral development bank and the International Monetary Fund to vote against, and use his or her best efforts to deny, any loans or other uses of the institutions’ funds to Bangladesh. Only the president himself can waive these restrictions.
However, US foreign assistance to support the people of Bangladesh through NGOs and other civil society organisations is not restricted under the TVPA, the embassy noted.
WHAT’S TIP?
US law defines TIP as recruiting, harbouring, transporting, providing or obtaining a person for labour or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery.
It also includes a situation where a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age.
“A victim need not be physically transported from one location to another for the crime to fall within this definition,” according to the US State Department annual TIP report, published in June 2019.
It ranks countries in four categories. Tier 1 rank means the countries fully compliant with the minimum standards in protecting trafficking victims; Tier 2 means the countries not fully compliant but making significant efforts.
Tier 2 Watch List means the countries not fully complying with the minimum standards in protecting trafficking victims; the absolute number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant and there is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking.
Tier 3 means the countries not making significant efforts to combat trafficking.