FROM BONDAGE TO FREEDOM 91 maintain a strong alliance with their counterparts in other countries, efforts of trafficking are very often exposed. Brokers and agents traffic women and children in the form of family travelling to another country. Every check post in 4,222 Km border region with India is used as a trafficking route. The traffickers have permanent stations in Kuriagram, Lal Monirhat, Panchages and 135 enclaves in Nilfamari. Sixty-six Pakistani camps in fourteen districts serve as a depot for traffickers. These Pakistanis illegally travel to Pakistan using the Punjab route to take women and children to Pakistan and sell them. Their agents are working in every bus, railway station and launch terminal. There is no reliable data on both internal and cross border trafficking of women and children. It is estimated that 200,000 women and children are estimated to have been trafficked to the Middle East in the last two decades. 200-400 women and children are estimably smuggled out each month to Pakistan, and in all 200,000 women have been trafficked to Pakistan over the last ten years.234 It is further estimated that 13,220 children have been trafficked out of Bangladesh in the last five years, and that 300,00 Bangladeshi minors work in the red light areas of India235. The reasons for the growing menace of trafficking in Bangladesh are same as those of Nepal. Alongside Nepal, Bangladesh is one of the world’s poorest countries. More than 48 per cent of its population lives in extreme poverty with an average of 755 persons per square kilometer, Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries of the world. 44 per cent of the country’s 131 million persons are under the age of 15. This population boom has exerted tremendous pressure on existing resources and, together with political and civil unrest, natural disasters and non-vibrant economy, has resulted in land-lessness and large scale outmigration, both internal as well as cross border. Outmigration, particularly to India, as well as trafficking of persons and girls is facilitated by an accessible and easily taversable border of over 4,222 kms with India. Cross border migration has escalated enormously in the recent years. According to Government of Bangladesh, in 1996-97, 227,584 Bangladeshis were legally employed overseas236. It is alleged that for each person who migrates legally, several cross the border illegally. For every person arrested for illegal border crossing, there are hundreds who go unintercepted. Linked to the problem of illegal migration is the problem of trafficking in persons. 234 235 236 Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, Government of Bangladesh, as well as Combined 3rd and 4th Periodic Report on CEDAW, 1997. Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association. Bangladesh Bureau of Manpower and Employment