Shelter for abused and ex-slave children, Bangladesh 

The kidnapping of women and children to sell them as slaves is not uncommon in Bangladesh. Sometimes the children just dissappear, sometimes the parents or young women are taken in by the stories of the intermediates and go voluntarily to another country where they are promised nice jobs and better lives only to end up as prisoner/slave in the direst circumstances.

Especially in the case of children it is often very difficult to find them and get them back. And the ones that are found can not always return to their families immediately. The children that were sold at a very young age sometimes can't remember their own names or their family name. The girls that were forced to work as prostitutes are sometimes not wanted back by their families, for fear of social stigmatisation. The extremely traumatised will need a lot of time and care to learn to cope with a life of their own at all.

The Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association (BNWLA) is one of the leading human rights organisations in Bangladesh. It works to combat all forms of violence against women and children.One of the main activities is combating trafficking in women and children by working on prevention, protection, repatriation, rehabilitation and legal support. 

BNWLA receives information about victims who are in captivity (in a brothel, cage brothel or jail in the name of safe custody) from various
sources including network organisations, sympathetic clients, community
people, police departments, journalists and partner organisations in other countries. BNWLA's people work in collaboration with law enforcers to rescue/release and repatriate the victims. 

In order to rehabilitate the survivors of various forms of violence BNWLA runs a big shelter home equipped with facilities for physical and psychological recovery, education and vocational training for reintegration into the society. Every year BNWLA rehabilitates more than 300 victim children and women. Some children and women return to their families after only a short stay, but in the case of survivors who are highly traumatised, or quite understandably cannot give any useful information about their family (if they have been taken from their homes at a very young age they sometimes do not even speak Bangla) are kept in the shelter home for a long period of time.Through medical care and psychosocial counselling they are helped with regaining their self-esteem so that they can protect themselves from being further victimised once they are reintegrated into the society through job placement and/or other alternatives.

The BNWLA gets some financial support from organisations like Novib and Norad for their legal work, but the shelter they run is always short of money. For instance, the children can get a training to work with computers or embroidery or confectionery to prepare them for jobs. The computer training is offered for free by a local organisation, but to get the most out of this training, the children should be able to practice at home (the shelter). If the BNWLA could raise 3500 Euro it would be able to buy two computers, four embroidery machines, an oven and some clothes and recreational materials. If it could raise more, it would be even better, but with this the children's chances to have a life of their own would already increase enormously. 


Total € 3500,--

More realized projects