Gender and Development

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Gender Thematic RETAs

Combating Trafficking of Women and Children in South Asia, 2000

In recent years, the issue of trafficking of women and children has been receiving increasing global attention. Poverty, globalization, war and conflict, natural disaster and improved regional transport networks and communication systems have added intensity and geographical expansion to the centuries-old issue of trafficking of women and children. As poverty is widely recognized as a major contributing factor to trafficking in women and children, ADB's poverty reduction operations have a lot of opportunities to prevent and reduce trafficking.

A regional technical assistance involving three developing member countries (DMCs), i.e., Bangladesh, India and Nepal, has been approved in November 2000 with the following three purposes:

• To identify the nature, extent and causes of trafficking of women and children and assess the linkages between the causes of human trafficking to poverty
• To assist DMCs in following up on findings and commitments made at global and regional fora (e.g. Second World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in December 2001, SAARC Convention in January 2002)
• To identify and recommend on how ADB regional and country programs and projects (e.g. infrastructure, micro-finance, rural development, regional policy dialogues, etc.) can be designed to address trafficking prevention and reduction

There are three key components:

1. country report and national workshop - each report containing key issues, basic statistics, pull-push factors, mapping of sources and destinations, legal framework and gaps, key stakeholders, case studies, and recommendations to ADB
2. exchange program between South Asia and the Mekong Subregion to exchange ideas and experiences on legal and institutional arrangements;
3. regional report and regional workshop to synthesize the country-level analysis

Following the national consultation workshops (Nepal in March, Bangladesh and India in April), a regional workshop will be held in Manila in late May. The regional workshop will involve high-level government officials from various related sectors, legal experts, anti-poverty project staff, aid agencies, NGOs and private sector representatives.

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