The IOM Deputy Director General Ambassador Laura Thompson and the Home Minister Advocate Sahara Khatun jointly launches today at the Hotel Sonargaon in Dhaka a training manual on care and support for the victims of human trafficking.

The manual is meant to develop the capacity of the government officials on providing support to victims and survivors of trafficking. The content includes sessions on understanding trafficking and safe migration, human rights violation and national and international legal instruments, identification, rescue, release, rehabilitation and integration of the victims, effects of trafficking, care and support, counseling, communication and attitudes towards trafficked victims and economic empowerment of the victims.

‘IOM will continue to work for a future free of human trafficking victims in need of rehabilitation and humane treatment.  We hope, this manual can be used as an effective tool to achieve that objective’, said IOM Regional Representative Ms. Rabab Fatima on the occasion of the launch.

A group of 51 master trainers from Bangladesh Police and the Department of Social Services have already been trained being trained using the contents of the manual, who will in turn provide training to 1,250 district government officials and representatives of law enforcement agencies in trafficking prone 22 districts.

The Chief Guest at the programme is Hon’ble Home Minister H. E. Advocate Shahara Khatun, while special guests are Ms. Quomaran Nessa Khanam, Secretary, Ministry of Social Welfare and Ms. Deena Huq, Director General, Prime Minister’s Office.

This training manual has been developed under the IOM project Prevention and Protection of Victims of Human Trafficking in Bangladesh (PPVHT-B), with support from the Norwegian and Danish governments.

IOM Deputy Director General Ms. Laura Thompson, who is visiting Bangladesh for the first time this week from Geneva and is also the Guest of Honour at today’s programme has said, ‘IOM has been working on trafficking issues in Bangladesh since the early 1990s. Bangladesh, as one of the first countries in the region to become a member of IOM and has a number of strong counter trafficking programmes. I am pleased to see that some very effective and innovative measures have been carried out in Bangladesh in this area’.

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