•
•
•
•
Lack of access for women and girls to education and decent work.
Lack of safety and security for women and girls combined with a lack of recourse to
support services and legal remedies for cases of sexual and gender-based violence.
Lack of legal status and safe or regular migration options for Rohingya women.
Lack of status and decision-making powers within the household.
15. Increased vulnerabilities for Rohingya women and girls compel them to leave their
homes in Rakhine State to seek security and stability in countries such as Malaysia,
Thailand and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Compounded by the precariousness of
their situations at home or in Bangladesh, experiences of forced migration can quickly
turn to violence, exploitation and extortion during the journey or at the destination.
16. Children in IDP and refugee camps are also vulnerable to exploitation due to their
living conditions and lack of development opportunities. One IDP woman in Rakhine
State explained:
“Brokers shared misinformation to children aged around 13, 14 and 15 years old.
Children do not want to live in camp and the brokers ask them to come with them.
They did not need to pay money to brokers. At the half-way point, the brokers asked
them to call their family to transfer money. Then they started threatening the family
until they transfer money.”15
17. Trafficking prevention activities in Bangladesh and elsewhere have often focused on
risk-awareness and community-level initiatives that challenge social norms relating
to, for example, dowry systems, early marriage and gender-based violence. These
initiatives only address part of the problem. The socio-economic conditions for
Rohingya men, women and children in Bangladesh and Myanmar that result from
deprivation of citizenship and experiences of displacement and dispossession drive
onwards migration, and desperation drives risk. Holistic measures that address a lack
of legal status, exclusion from economic activities, poverty, inequality, and depletion
of rights are a vital missing component in anti-trafficking initiatives for stateless
people and refugees.
Trafficking as a form of persecution
18. In 2017, Rohingyas suffered forms of State violence that are widely accepted to
amount to genocide. Since then, they have been unable to return back to their
homelands safely. 16 In Rakhine State, they are not simply caught in the crossfire
between the Myanmar armed forces and the Arakan Army, they are doubly
persecuted by both entities. The pressure and impact for Rohingyas living under
formal and informal authorities in Rakhine, both of which effectively treat them as
noncitizens, has increased insecurities and financial hardships. It is vital that safe
routes out of the country are available to genocide survivors. While routes out of the
country are a vital lifeline for some, for others they have become fraught with
violence, abuse and risk to life. The deprivation of citizenship and movement
restrictions drives a system in which brokers and parallel states gain revenue from
15
16
Quote taken from ISI’s Dangerous Journeys report, supra note 3
Supra note 3
5