Women become vulnerable to trafficking due to poverty, limited education, gender inequality, and false promises of work or marriage.
Why do we exist and how are we different from Basha Boutique? Why do women end up trafficked?
Friends of Basha exists to support the holistic restoration journey of women and children escaping trafficking and abuse. While Basha Boutique provides employment and skills training, Friends of Basha focuses on the deeper needs—safe housing, trauma counseling, education, and long-term care.
We stand beside survivors as they rebuild their lives with dignity and hope, addressing the root causes of trafficking such as poverty, lack of education, and social vulnerability.
Poverty is not simply a lack of decent employment. It starts with little to no education, not getting enough food, leading to preventable diseases. Unable to provide their children with anything different, the cycle repeats.
While Bangladesh has made strides in gender equality in recent years, men continue to hold much of the power. Females are expected to have strong male guardians to protect them and often lack power to protect themselves or make their own decisions. In spite of being illegal, child marriage is also common in some communities.
Any stain on a girl’s reputation can follow her into her future. Sexual harassment, unwanted suitors, rape, or human trafficking mean a girl is seen as dirty and no longer respected in society.
Trafficking is widespread in Bangladesh, a source, transit, and destination country for sex trafficking. An estimated 100,000 women work as commercial sex workers, often not by choice, and around 29,000 underage girls are trapped in exploitation, losing their childhoods and facing lifelong trauma. Poverty, gender inequality, and cultural pressures leave few alternatives, and escaping the cycle requires targeted interventions that address the root causes.
For those exploited as children, they don’t even know what normal life is. Whether fending for themselves on the streets, married off as children, being forced into prostitution or trafficked to another country, or lacking income or family support, the layers of trauma seem insurmountable. When society tells you that you are bad with no hope of redemption, you believe that message. It’s a long journey to even dare to hope. Receiving an opportunity to heal, support yourself, educate your child, live with dignity…. that is the first step. This is why Friends of Basha is so important in breaking the cycle.
Fariha was eight years old when her parents sent her to work as a maid in a home to help support her family. At twelve years old they arranged her marriage to an older man and she soon gave birth to their child. Her husband was abusive, and one day she had had enough. She ran from the home. A man approached her and said he could help her to get a good job. Instead he sold her to a brothel and she became trapped in exploitation.
‘My Husband Sold Me to a Brothel.’ Elle Magazine, October 2018
For sex workers in Bangladesh, the future is as bleak as the past. SCMP, January 2017
Bangladesh’s Biggest Brothel. Aljazeera, July 2017
Growing number of Bangladeshi women in Indian brothels. Dhaka Tribune, June 2017