Human trafficking an emerging issue for the Maldives

The SAARC report, funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and produced by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), suggested that human trafficking in the Maldives “is presumably is associated with the country’s socio-economic status as the most developed South Asian country, and its reliance on the migration of foreign workers to support sectors such as tourism and construction.”

“The Maldives is a destination country for migrant workers trafficked from neighbouring Bangladesh and India for forced labour, and to a lesser extent women from Sri Lanka, Thailand, India and China who are trafficked to Male’ for commercial sexual exploitation,” the report said, adding that “there is also some existence of some inter-island trafficking of Maldivian girls to the capital for domestic servitude.”

The country’s main offenders were “registered employment agents who fraudulently recruit low-skilled migrant workers and subject them to conditions of forced labour once they are in the country.”