Human trafficking is a complex phenomenon, resulting from the involvement of diverse national and transnational factors. Although trafficking in persons is often identified as a part of organized and/or cross-border crime, it also occurs within national boundaries – called internal trafficking. Human trafficking, whether internal or cross-border, is inextricably linked with forced, fraudulent or involuntary migration/movement of people, and the end-object of this crime is sexual, labour, or other forms of exploitation. As such, unsafe/irregular migration always runs the risk of human trafficking. Human trafficking is, however, different from human smuggling, which involves international travel/movement and in which the smuggled migrant is not forcibly held once he/she reaches the destination country.
In the present NPA 2015 the term ‘human trafficking’ is interchangeably used with ‘trafficking in human beings’ or ‘trafficking in persons’, and it is used in the sense of the recent comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation of 2011. The Human Trafficking Deterrence and Suppression Ordinance 2011 defines „human trafficking” as:
“The selling, buying, recruitment, receipt, transportation, transfer, or harbouring of any person for the purpose of sexual-exploitation, labour-exploitation or any other form of exploitation whether in or outside of Bangladesh by means of (a) threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, or (b) abduction, fraud or deception, or of the abuse of any person’s socio-economic, environmental or other types of vulnerability, or (c) of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person”.
The above definition of human trafficking covers both internal and cross-border human trafficking, and trafficking of any human being and for any purpose. However, the offence of human trafficking consists of the following three constitutive aspects:
(i) There has to be an act (the selling, buying, recruitment, receipt, transportation, transfer, or harbouring of any person)
(ii) The act is done for exploitation (of that person) (sexual or labour exploitation or any other exploitation) whether in or outside of Bangladesh
(iii) The act is accomplished through certain means such asforce, abduction, fraud or deception, and the like.
As an exception, in the case of trafficking of children the act of trafficking may occur without using the means (abduction. coercion etc.) as described in element (iii) above. It is critical to note that trafficking in children precludes any consideration of “consent”. This therefore implies that even when a child apparently volunteer or participate in a process leading to trafficking- that apparent consent is taken to be constructed either through deception or by concealing information.