Bangladesh has maintained its Tier 2 ranking in the United States Department of State’s 2026 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, as the government demonstrated overall increasing anti-trafficking efforts despite failing to fully meet global minimum standards.
According to the report, Bangladesh achieved legislative progress through updated legal measures and expanded prosecutions, but persistent gaps in victim protection, declining conviction rates, high migrant recruitment fees, and official complicity continue to undermine national anti-trafficking operations.
Enhanced anti-trafficking laws amid declining convictions
Bangladesh government introduced major legislative updates during the reporting period, passing the Prevention and Suppression of Human Trafficking and Smuggling of Migrants Ordinance 2026 in January 2026, which Parliament enacted into law as the Prevention and Suppression of Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling Bill in April 2026.
The new law incorporated a dedicated chapter on migrant smuggling, updated investigation procedures, and expanded the definition of exploitation to encompass forced criminality.
Under the existing Prevention and Suppression of Human Trafficking Act (PSHTA) 2012, sex and labour trafficking carry severe penalties ranging from five years to life imprisonment and a minimum fine of Tk50,000 ($407), whilst bonded labour carries five to 12 years’ imprisonment.
Law enforcement agencies – coordinated by a central monitoring cell – scaled up investigations to 961 cases involving 5,263 suspects, including 137 sex trafficking, 443 forced labour, and 381 unspecified cases, up from 811 investigations in the previous year.
Prosecutions saw a sharp increase to 1,795 suspects, compared to 452 during the preceding period. Specialised Anti-Human Trafficking Tribunals operated across seven divisional capitals alongside 80 women and children courts handling cases across 57 districts.
However, judicial outcomes declined, with courts convicting only 76 traffickers – a steady drop from 103 convictions in 2024 and 407 in 2023.
Judges sentenced 35 convicted traffickers to prison terms ranging from three months to life imprisonment, accompanied by fines of Tk5,000 to Tk500,000 ($41 to $4,065).
The US report noted that the judicial imposition of fines instead of proportionate prison terms weakened deterrence.
Moreover, official complicity and corruption remained significant hurdles; although charges were brought against nearly 100 recruitment agencies for charging excessive fees, no government employee was investigated or convicted for trafficking complicity.
Recruitment exploitation, refugee vulnerabilities
Government agencies identified 1,135 trafficking victims (199 sex trafficking, 510 forced labour, and 426 unspecified), marking a decrease from 1,462 identified previously, whereas civil society organisations identified an additional 4,758 victims.
Direct government victim support declined sharply, with assistance provided to only 111 victims compared to 883 in the prior reporting period, despite an allocation of Tk212.78 million ($1.73 million) for victim care, a substantial portion of which was diverted to managing Rohingya refugees.
To streamline assistance, the Ministry of Home Affairs updated victim identification guidelines and piloted a digital National Referral Mechanism (NRM) across seven districts.
Expatriate workers face severe risk of debt bondage due to excessive government-set recruitment fees ranging from Tk85,000 to Tk262,000 ($691–$2,130), alongside extortionate charges by unlicensed middlemen (dalals).
In response, the Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment published amended scoring rules for recruiting agencies in October 2025 to encourage an employer-pay model and launched a digital employment portal in December 2025 that eliminated the mandatory Tk1,350 ($11) migration fee.
Internationally, young educated Bangladeshis were increasingly lured by fraudulent job offers into cyber-enabled scam compounds in Southeast Asia and subjected to forced criminality.
Vulnerabilities were equally acute among the more than one million Rohingya refugees residing in 34 camps in Cox’s Bazar and Bhasan Char.
Due to the absence of clear legal reporting mechanisms in refugee camps, Rohingya victims faced barriers accessing criminal justice, leaving them exposed to sex trafficking, forced labour, forced begging, yaba drug smuggling, and forced recruitment by armed groups.
Global situation and country tier rankings
The US State Department’s 2026 report evaluates 188 countries and territories based on their compliance with TVPA minimum standards, placing them into four distinct categories.
Tier 1 comprises nations that fully meet minimum standards, including the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Philippines, Singapore, France, Denmark, and Taiwan.
Tier 2 includes countries making significant efforts to comply, such as Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, Italy, and Japan.
The Tier 2 Watch List includes nations with high or rapidly increasing victim numbers failing to show proportional progress, including Nepal, Maldives, South Africa, Brazil, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Tier 3 designates 21 governments that do not meet minimum standards and are making no significant efforts, including Afghanistan, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Belarus, Burma, Cambodia, Cuba, Eritrea, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Sint Maarten. Four countries – Haiti, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen – were listed as Special Cases due to ongoing instability.
Additionally, 12 countries were identified for maintaining a documented “policy or pattern” of state-sponsored human trafficking, including forced labour in government programs or child soldier recruitment.
On a global level, official law enforcement data for 2025 documented 24,254 prosecutions, 7,576 convictions, and 156,912 identified victims worldwide, with cyber-enabled scam compounds operating from Southeast Asia representing a rapidly evolving transnational threat.
