This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

080139Z Feb 06

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 10 DHAKA 000630 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
E.O. 12958:N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PREL BG
SUBJECT:  SOLICITATION FOR INCLE FUNDS 
 
REF:  2005 STATE 221416 
 
¶1.  Per 2005 STATE 221416, post is forwarding the following TIP 
proposal submitted by The Asia Foundation (TAF). 
 
Given the limited resources available through INCLE this year, we 
do not feel this is this is a strong proposal.  The problems 
addressed in this proposal are either adequately addressed 
through other USG funded programs, can not be solved yet through 
this type of program in Bangladesh, or require too much funding 
to serve too small an audience. 
 
The three elements of this program are 1) community policing; 2) 
a regional anti-TIP website; and 3) training of Bangladesh 
diplomats.   While we support improved law enforcement and 
collaboration with law enforcement officials, we believe that the 
combination of a national police force, coupled with a climate of 
impunity for police and other officials, makes community policing 
unworkable here now.   The regional TIP website is already up and 
running, so an additional USD 70,000 for its maintenance seems 
excessive.  The International Organization for Migration (IOM) 
already has a grant to train entry level and midcareer diplomats, 
so this would be a duplication of efforts. 
 
Post supports the proposal submitted by the Dept. of Justice 
Office of  Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance and 
Training (OPDAT), which focuses on the training a small number of 
prosecutors on how to effectively prosecute traffickers.  We 
suggest approving this proposal, with the following changes: 
 
a) The RLA in Dhaka should approach the Ministry of Justice and 
the Ministry of Home affairs to secure greater host     country 
funding. 
 
b) The RLA should work with the relevant authorities in Dhaka to 
ensure this course become a permanent part of the curriculum at 
the judicial training academy. 
 
¶2.  TAF's Proposal 
 
¶A. I. Title:  Building Community and Victim Protection Mechanisms 
and Strengthening Government Responses to Human Trafficking in 
Bangladesh 
 
II. Recipient Organization: The Asia Foundation/Bangladesh 
 
III. Project Duration:  Two years 
 
IV. Project Summary 
 
The Asia Foundation (Foundation) requests a grant of $472,560 for 
a two-year program that will strengthen the capacity of local 
communities, counter-trafficking organizations, and government 
agencies and officials to combat human trafficking; improve 
victim reintegration and recovery services; and improve the 
criminal justice response to human trafficking.  The proposed 
program will address critical needs in three strategic niche 
program areas that are not being addressed by current counter- 
trafficking initiatives, while at the same time helping to 
enhance the impact of existing efforts. 
 
The proposed program will advance core objectives through three 
complementary and mutually reinforcing components: 
 
  ¶1.   To build linkages and foster trust and collaboration between 
     local community leaders, police, local government officials, non 
     governmental organizations (NGOs), support service providers, an 
     members of the community to prevent trafficking, increase police 
     accountability in combating trafficking at the community level, 
     file and pursue trafficking cases in the district courts, and 
     facilitate the successful reintegration of victims back into 
     their communities; 
 
  ¶2.   To strengthen the capacity of Bangladeshi Foreign Service 
     officers to identify and repatriate trafficking victims and to 
     raise the standards of official care provided to victims; and, 
 
  ¶3.   To revitalize coordination among counter-trafficking 
     organizations, promote improved information sharing to increase 
     innovation, enhance core capacities, reduce redundancy, and 
     improve comprehensive victim services. 
 
The proposed program will draw on the Foundation's long-standing 
trust relations with government agencies and a broad range of 
NGOs and other civil society actors which it has assisted through 
its 52 years of on-the-ground presence in Bangladesh.  It will 
further draw on the Foundation's expertise in justice sector 
reform, community legal service delivery, public security and 
criminal justice (including milestone work in community-oriented 
policing (COP)), human rights, legal empowerment, application of 
information technology tools to advance program goals, and 
international relations.  In addition, the program will benefit 
from more than a decade of Foundation experience in counter- 
trafficking programming and best practice in South and Southeast 
Asia. 
 
The program has been developed in close consultation with the 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), the Ministry of Women's 
Affairs, the Bangladesh National Police, community leaders, and 
international and local organizations that are engaged in 
combating trafficking in persons.  A key element of the 
Foundation's strategy for ensuring maximum impact will be regular 
communication, coordination, and networking with other 
organizations that are working to prevent internal and cross- 
border trafficking of Bangladeshi citizens.  This will ensure 
that the combination of Foundation grant-making to local partner 
organizations and Foundation-managed program activities dovetail 
with the complementary work and core capacities of counterpart 
organizations with which U.S. government agencies and other 
international organizations are working. 
 
¶V.  Background and Justification 
 
While the Government of Bangladesh's response to human 
trafficking has measurably improved following its brief, but 
action-prompting, relegation to the U.S. State Department's 
Trafficking in Persons Tier 3 and subsequent restoration to Tier 
2 Watch, human trafficking remains a serious human rights, 
criminal, social, and international relations issue in 
Bangladesh.  The forms and mechanisms of human trafficking in 
Bangladesh are numerous.  For example, border police are 
allegedly involved in the trafficking of young rural women on the 
western border as sex workers in West Bengal.  Adolescent boys 
from the flood-prone char areas in northwestern Bangladesh are 
deceptively recruited by middlemen during the monga season to 
work in the dangerous ship-breaking industry in Chittagong.  In a 
variety of contexts, parents surrender their children and pay 
"job placement fees" to traffickers who pose as legitimate 
employment agents with the promise of placement in lucrative jobs 
in India, Pakistan, or the Middle East, where children face 
exploitation and abuse. 
 
In the rare cases in which victims are rescued and repatriated to 
their homes, the safe reintegration of "spoiled" girls and women 
back to their families and communities is undermined by pervasive 
social stigmas and lack of coordinated physical and psychosocial 
counseling and recovery services.  Moreover, inadequate capacity 
on the part of law enforcement officers and the intrusion of 
corrupt practices and institutional complicity pose additional 
impediments to bringing human traffickers to justice.  The 
challenge is exacerbated by lack of opportunities for citizens 
and communities to productively engage with police, Union 
Parishad (UP) members, medical professionals, social workers, and 
other public officials and stakeholders in understanding the 
dynamics of trafficking and repatriation efforts and the 
circumstances, needs, and rights of trafficking victims.  This 
situation in turn constrains opportunities to take collective 
action in combating trafficking, to raise standards of police 
accountability through action of this kind, and to meet the 
security, counseling, livelihood, and other aftercare needs of 
trafficking survivors. 
. 
While the counter-trafficking movement in Bangladesh has 
progressed in significant ways, there is a consensus view among 
stakeholders that the quality of coordination and collaboration 
among domestic NGOs and international organizations has lost much 
of the momentum that characterized earlier efforts.  Successful 
awareness raising campaigns have been undertaken by a variety of 
organizations in several areas across the country, yet victim 
services continue to vary in quality, outreach, and 
complementarity, and to be incomplete. Moreover, reintegration 
measures tend to occur on ad hoc basis, while systematic 
protocols are lacking and the response of law enforcement 
agencies remains weak.  A number of local NGOs-including the 
Bangladesh National Women Lawyers' Association (BNWLA), the 
Centre for Women and Children Studies (CWCS), the Association for 
Community Development (ACD), Action Against Trafficking and 
Sexual Exploitation of Children (ATSEC), Rights Jessore, Uddipon, 
Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM), Young Power in Social Action (YPSA), 
and Bangladesh Institute of Theater Arts (BITA)-have launched 
counter-trafficking awareness campaigns that aim to reach a 
variety of target audiences in different parts of the country. 
These campaigns include training of journalists on trafficking 
issues; counter-trafficking workshops and dialogues involving 
NGOs, professionals, and district and upazila leaders; and, 
public marches and popular culture shows.  Notwithstanding these 
initiatives, recent research by INCIDIN Bangladesh and field 
investigations by Asia Foundation program staff have found that 
grassroots communities still have limited sources of information 
on trafficking, as well as limited institutional means of raising 
awareness of trafficking at the community level.  The 
implications include fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning 
of trafficking and the rights of trafficking victims. 
 
Prosecution efforts are the least developed of counter- 
trafficking efforts in Bangladesh, although the Bangladeshi 
government has developed an anti-trafficking police cell in Dhaka 
and has committed to placing dedicated district-level anti- 
trafficking police and magistrates in all 64 districts. 
Foundation field investigations in November 2005 found that, at 
the district level, this framework and mechanisms for arrest, 
prosecution, and conviction of traffickers are in a more nascent 
stage of development than Dhaka-based government and non- 
government agencies may acknowledge.  Local NGOs have conducted 
police training in gender sensitization and trafficking 
awareness, and counter-trafficking material also has reportedly 
been included in the curriculum of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) 
border patrol; however, police, BDR, and other elements of the 
criminal justice sector that operate in hotspot districts, 
including magistrates and public prosecutors, still appear to 
have not received specific training on victim identification and 
interview methods, filing first information reports (FIRs) and 
investigative reports, applying the correct laws, evidence 
collection and handling, and victim-centered trial 
proceedings-all of which are vital to achieving more trafficking 
convictions and justice for victims of exploitation. 
 
Traditional community structures, institutions, and values 
influence the nature of relations between community members and 
the law enforcement, governance, and other institutions that 
serve them.  This dynamic is central to addressing trafficking in 
Bangladesh, as it shapes the circumstances in which trafficking 
occurs, the mechanisms that exist to check it, and the manner in 
which victims are rescued, interviewed, accommodated in shelters, 
and eventually returned to a better, more secure life.  The 
success of prevention, protection, prosecution, and recovery 
initiatives ultimately depends on the understanding and 
commitment of various community actors, including police, 
prosecutors, local government officials, shelter workers, public 
health professionals, counselors, alternative livelihood 
trainers, NGOs, the broader community, and families.  There is a 
critical need to understand the dynamic of relations that are 
unique to particular geographic areas, individuals, and 
communities, and to develop support mechanisms that draw on the 
collective role, responsibilities, and competencies of different 
community members. 
 
With respect to the broader public security environment in which 
human trafficking occurs, the situation in Bangladesh has 
deteriorated in recent years, with an increase in robbery, 
extortion, assault and intimidation, trafficking, and domestic 
violence and other crimes of violence against women.  At the 
community level, a widening gap in mutual understanding, trust, 
and communication between police and citizens further undermines 
public security.  A empirical baseline program planning survey of 
community-police relations conducted by The Asia Foundation in 
2004 found that citizens have little trust or confidence in the 
police and prefer to exhaust alternative remedies before seeking 
police assistance when threatened or affected by crime.  Police 
have little sense of professional duty towards citizens, while 
citizens in turn have a limited appreciation of the challenges 
that police face in performing their duties, such as inadequate 
manpower, lack of professional training or equipment, and low 
salaries.  Tensions and misunderstandings in community-police 
relations are exacerbated by lack of opportunity for citizens to 
engage in good faith dialogue with police on issues of common 
interest or to reach joint solutions to issues that provoke 
conflict in community-police relations. 
 
For the past two years, the Foundation has collaborated with the 
Bangladesh National Police, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the 
Office of the Prime Minister, and local facilitating partner 
organizations in a milestone initiative to design and implement 
community-oriented policing in Bangladesh.  The purpose of the 
program is to facilitate open and informed dialogue between 
police and members of the communities that they serve in 
identifying common criminal justice and public security issues, 
sharing views and expectations concerning their respective roles 
and responsibilities, and designing and implementing practical 
strategies through which citizens and police can work together to 
advance common interests and promote improved public security. 
 
The Foundation's pilot program work has yielded encouraging 
results and valuable lessons that will inform ongoing work. 
Examples include: 
      Establishment of relationships of trust between NGO 
     partners, police, and community stakeholders; 
    Commitment to the concept of COP among citizens and police; 
      Establishment of publicly acclaimed community-police forums 
     in the three program areas; 
s; 
      Examples of the practical benefits that result from 
     collaboration between citizens and police in addressing drug 
     addiction, gambling, harassment of women, and other issues of 
     concern to the community; 
      The broader interest that pilot program activities have 
     generated among police, government officials, civil society 
     organizations, and the media beyond the program sites. 
 
NGO partners report striking anecdotal examples of progress 
toward narrowing the gap in understanding and respect between 
citizens and police.  These include: 
      Participation by police superintendents and other senior 
     officials in events organized by community members at the ward 
     level, signaling a respect for the merit and substance of 
     community interests that was absent from earlier police 
     attitudes; 
      Readiness of police and citizens to devote voluntary time to 
     the formation and activities of community-police forums; 
ms; 
      Willingness of representatives of different political 
     parties to lay aside political differences and work together as 
     members of community-police forums; 
      Frequent calls from police and citizens in neighboring areas 
     to launch COP programs in their localities. 
 
Through their first 15 months of implementation, the pilot 
program activities have yielded these and other positive results, 
and several organizations involved in counter-trafficking have 
expressed an interest in the COP model to enhance counter- 
trafficking efforts and cooperation among a variety of community 
stakeholders.  In response, the Foundation proposes to integrate 
trafficking prevention and victim protection in its efforts to 
build trust and foster collaboration between local communities 
and the police, and to include other actors who can add value to 
counter-trafficking initiatives.  The proposed activities will 
add further value to existing efforts, recognizing that 
t 
expansive, nationwide justice sector trainings, such as those 
being undertaken by IOM, will only secure the desired increase in 
prosecutions if Bangladeshis are willing to file trafficking 
incident reports and to provide evidence and testimony to the 
police. 
 
Victim protection efforts are also underway, with a few of the 
above-mentioned local NGOs running shelters for street children, 
sexually abused children, and trafficking survivors.  Most of 
these shelters attempt "one-stop shop" provision of a variety of 
recovery services, including forensic and rehabilitative medical 
care and psychosocial treatment, education, vocational training, 
legal services, and-less frequently-ad hoc repatriation.   These 
services are typically provided by well-meaning staff members 
that have to provide multiple specialized services (for example, 
psychosocial counseling and vocational training) without adequate 
training or certification.  Another gap in victim protection 
services is the lack of follow-up mechanisms.  The ultimate 
welfare outcome of the vast majority of trafficking victims after 
protective services are provided-that is, after shelter release, 
after vocational training completion, or after social 
reintegration-is unknown. 
 
VI. Program Description 
 
The Asia Foundation proposes to leverage its long-standing 
relationships with public institutions, local and international 
NGOs, and community-based organizations to implement a multi- 
faceted counter-trafficking strategy that involves community- 
level action to strengthen the law enforcement counter- 
trafficking response; address the lack of coordinated medical, 
social service, and other support networks; and, challenge the 
social stigmas that threaten the safety of trafficking victims 
and prevent them from successfully reintegrating back into their 
families and communities and from seeking and securing  justice. 
 
The proposed programs will build on the Foundation's successes, 
lessons learned, and best practice models from USG-supported 
counter-trafficking programs in Nepal and throughout Southeast 
and East Asia, and will complement the existing work of local 
organizations and development partners in addressing common 
interests.  Foundation experience and relationships of trust from 
the national government level to the grassroots community level 
provide an excellent base for work in select program areas that 
will complement and add value to the existing trafficking 
prevention efforts of local organizations and development 
partners (including those supported by U.S. government agencies), 
and expand counter-trafficking efforts in Bangladesh where they 
are needed most.  The criminal justice component of the program 
builds on a combination of established technical competencies in 
Bangladesh, including access to justice, COP, legal empowerment, 
and a long history of support to and working relations with the 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Bangladesh National Police 
Academy, and civil society partners. 
 
Objectives 
The primary objectives of the program are: 
 
  ¶1.   To foster dialogue, trust-building, and multi-disciplinary 
     cooperation involving government officials, local law enforcemen 
     agencies, communities, and counter-trafficking NGOs; 
 
  ¶2.   To  strengthen the capacity of the Ministry of Foreign 
     Affairs and Bangladeshi Foreign Service officers to protect 
     victims and aid in the prosecution of traffickers; and, 
 
  ¶3.   To enhance victim protection and services. 
 
 
Objective 1:   To foster dialogue, trust-building, and multi- 
disciplinary cooperation involving government officials, police, 
medical professionals and counselors, social service providers, 
communities, and counter-trafficking NGOs, and 
 
Objective 3:  To enhance victim protection and services. 
 
Human traffickers are successful in recruiting and transporting 
victims due in large part to coordinated internal and cross- 
border mechanisms.  In the face of these criminal networks, the 
counter-trafficking community can only expect to achieve 
measurable reductions in human trafficking if its members are 
similarly informed, coordinated, and networked.  The Foundation 
proposes two activities to enhance counter-trafficking capacity, 
coordination, and political will at both the community/district 
level (particularly in hotspot source and border communities) and 
the national level, among NGOs, international NGOs, international 
organizations, government agencies, medical and social service 
providers, and donors. 
 
Activity 1.1: Developing an integrated community approach to 
combating trafficking and supporting survivors in hotspot areas 
 
The Foundation proposes to develop an integrated community 
approach to combating human trafficking that facilitates 
collaboration and action among law enforcement officers, Union 
Parishad members, religious leaders, medical professionals, 
counselors, shelter workers, livelihood trainers, NGO 
representatives, religious leaders, businesspersons, and other 
members of the community.  Community groups will be convened to 
learn about and act on: 
      the factors that make a community vulnerable to trafficking; 
      the systems and networks through which traffickers operate; 
    the challenges and pressures that law enforcement officials 
face in bringing perpetrators to justice or ensuring the security 
of rescued trafficking victims; 
      how to build collaboration between police, community 
     members, UP members, and other stakeholders to increase police 
     accountability; 
      the social stigmas faced by rescued victims when they return 
     to their communities; and, 
      the long-term support mechanisms required to ensure their 
     secure and sustainable reintegration in the community and the 
     steps that can be taken to promote better collaboration among 
     various stakeholders. 
 
ers. 
 
Drawing on the experience of the Foundation's similar work with 
community protection networks in Cambodia, Indonesia, the 
Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, and on the Foundation's 
experience in COP in Bangladesh, this integrated program will 
place particular emphasis on awareness raising, formation of 
community watchdog groups that will work with law enforcement 
agencies and local government bodies to prevent and report 
trafficking, and support and recovery services for victims.   The 
Foundation proposes to implement this cost-efficient, integrated 
approach in collaboration with local NGO partners in three areas 
that have high rates of trafficking.  Partners will be selected 
on the basis of relevant experience and core competence for work 
of this kind.  Potential partners include:  Banchte Shekha, a 
women's empowerment NGO in Jessore District, with which the 
Foundation is presently working on COP programs; ACD, which 
operates in Rajshahi, Chapai Nawabganj, and Naogaon Districts on 
the western border with India; Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Services 
(RDRS) in Kurigram District; and, Uddipon, in the Chittagong 
area.  Jessore, Rajshahi, Chapai Nawabganj, and Naogaon are 
located near border crossings of popular trafficking routes to 
Calcutta, while Kurigram District is home to the seasonally 
famine-prone char communities, where young men and women are 
vulnerable to trafficking to India, Chittagong, and other areas 
for sexual purposes and labor exploitation. 
 
Program activities will include preliminary focus group 
discussions and participatory empirical research to map the 
features of trafficking in the particular communities; 
establishment of counter-trafficking forums in which a variety of 
stakeholders will meet regularly to discuss the empirical 
findings and plan activities; and, activities that will combine 
community dialogue, awareness raising, improved support services, 
professional capacity development, and articulation of community 
views and interests to national-level government agencies.  The 
community-oriented approach will also contribute to the 
identification of new livelihood training programs and the 
expansion of current Foundation-supported livelihood training 
programs that hold the greatest potential in assisting 
trafficking victims to establish economic independence. 
 
The distinctive feature of the Foundation's program approach is 
that it involves sustained interaction among the various 
stakeholder groups, as opposed to periodic engagement for 
training, awareness-raising, or other activities.  In this way, 
the community-oriented approach will build on the interests sown 
and the basic capacities established through complementary 
program interventions, adding further value to the work of IOM 
and other organizations that are providing training, conducting 
awareness-raising activities, and other interventions.  Based on 
the approach utilized in its existing COP program, the Foundation 
will carefully monitor and document the experience of the pilot 
integrated community counter-trafficking programs, with the aim 
of identifying best practice for extension to other communities 
in future.  Several government agencies have endorsed this 
approach as being urgently needed and strategic for combating 
trafficking of Bangladeshis. 
 
The community-oriented approach will also serve as the basis for 
a complementary victim support intervention by Foundation program 
staff.  Providing protection and recovery services to trafficking 
survivors is important for two major reasons: first, for the 
rights-based reason that victims of exploitation have rights to 
fundamental protections and assistance; and, second, to encourage 
victim participation in the law enforcement response and improve 
the chances of prosecuting traffickers.  Although minimum 
standards for victim care and support have been agreed to in 
principle by representatives of the South Asian countries 
participating in the USAID-funded SARI/Q project, the standards 
have yet to be fully operationalized in ways that translate to 
results or improvements on the ground.  In Bangladesh, large- 
scale investments by development partners underwrite the costs of 
shelters and other care facilities that house victims in 
extremely poor, non-empowering conditions and re-violate their 
human rights by restricting their freedom of movement and right 
to privacy, and effacing their dignity.  In an attempt to attract 
large amounts of donor funds, some shelters model themselves into 
one-stop shops of comprehensive but low-quality services, with 
shelter managers doubling as (untrained) psychosocial counselors 
and vocational trainers, rather than choosing to coordinate with 
local counterparts to establish referral systems linking high- 
quality specialty organizations.  With the poor conditions that 
many of these facilities offer, trafficking victims feel 
unprotected or sometimes threatened, and often will choose not to 
participate in the criminal justice process - and sometimes even 
flee the shelters, eventually ending up back in their 
exploitative environment. 
 
The community-oriented approach will serve as a mechanism for 
increasing the quality of care facilities and adherence to formal 
standards.  This will involve filling three critical gaps: first, 
victim support organizations there needs to be a tool to assess 
and monitor the quality and needs of a facility according to the 
agreed upon minimum standards for victim support and case 
management.  The Asia Foundation has recently developed such a 
tool.  Second, shelter workers and care providers require 
capacity building, coordination, and, often, transformation to a 
more survivor-centered philosophy, to ensure empowering, goal- 
oriented, and time-bound seamless services, including access to 
justice and legal assistance.  Third, there should be better 
follow-up by service providers, using the knowledge and ideas of 
survivors to design more effective community protection programs. 
 
As a value-added programmatic focus of the community-oriented 
approach, the Foundation will address these three gaps in 
collaboration with local NGO facilitating partners such as ACD, 
Uddipon, Rights Jessore, RDRS, and BITA, endeavoring to include 
as many local service providers as possible in the capacity 
building process.  The Foundation will use its minimum standards 
for victim support assessment tool as a central prop to bring 
together shelter, psychosocial, legal, and skills training 
service providers in a series of training workshops where 
participants will: (i) assess the quality of care in their own 
facility and that of their peers according to the universally 
agreed-upon minimum standards, and pinpoint areas that require 
improvement; (ii) collaboratively design comprehensive victim 
support service systems in the major hotspot areas of Bangladesh, 
focusing not on one-stop-shop versus referral models but on 
maximization of quality of care (which may lead to different 
models in different areas); and, (iii) develop and begin 
implementing a time-bound plan to implement these comprehensive 
systems, with financial and technical inputs from the Foundation. 
 
Sustainability:  The integrated community support program is 
modeled on the Foundation's existing programmatic approach to COP 
in Bangladesh, in which police, local government officials, 
religious leaders, business persons, community leaders, and 
others devote time to program activities on a voluntary basis. 
For their leadership role in facilitating focus group 
discussions, baseline data collection, committee formation, 
regular stakeholder meetings, and other activities, NGO partners 
in the integrated community anti-trafficking program will receive 
modest financial support.  They will further benefit from 
technical assistance from Asia Foundation program staff and local 
counter-trafficking specialists.  By the end of two years, the 
program is expected to instill sufficient capacity and to secure 
sufficient commitment from key stakeholders to enable communities 
to continue core activities on a financially independent basis, 
and to leverage additional donor or government support for 
activities that flow from preliminary work. 
 
Activity 1.2:  Developing an improved national-level approach to 
coordinating and improving counter-trafficking efforts: the 
TIPinAsia web portal (www.tipinasia.info) 
 
Effective communication, information sharing, and coordination 
among NGOs, law enforcement officials, and other service 
providers are essential to combating trafficking; however, at 
present, collaboration in Bangladesh has lost momentum among 
NGOs, IOs, and government agencies that work on trafficking 
issues, and existing linkages, information sources, and exchange 
mechanisms are neither efficient nor consistently reliable, 
especially with the reduction in the frequency of Counter- 
Trafficking Thematic Group meetings over the last two years.  The 
problems now faced by practitioners include a lack of a common 
vision and goals; a lack of knowledge of the activities 
undertaken by counterpart organizations; lack of efficient access 
to current laws, regulations, government initiatives, and 
research reports; and, a need for contact information for 
enforcement agencies, shelters, and other support services. 
 
To meet these needs, the Internet provides a low-cost, broadly 
accessible platform for information sharing, management, and 
application.  The Asia Foundation proposes to draw on its 
regional experience with innovative ICT applications to enhance 
the work of government and non-government counter-trafficking 
practitioners with www.tipinasia.info, a regional, multi-lingual, 
counter-trafficking web portal that has addressed similar 
information sharing challenges in Southeast Asia.  The portal 
currently serves Cambodia, Thailand, and East Timor with Khmer, 
Thai, Tetum, Portuguese, and English language support.  The 
Foundation proposes to expand www.tipinasia.info to include a 
Bangladesh site through which stakeholders can share information 
and better coordinate their work in Bangla and English.  The 
website will serve as a cost-efficient meeting space to 
complement Counter-Trafficking Thematic Group meetings, serving 
as a platform for dialogue, exchange, service referrals, partner- 
finding, and consensus building.  Building on earlier start-up 
investments and on best practice drawn from experience to date, 
start-up costs will be low and the time required to advance from 
pilot testing to full implementation will be relatively short. 
 
Widespread Internet access among anti-trafficking organizations 
in Dhaka and district centers provides an excellent base for 
information sharing through a Bangladeshi version of 
www.tipinasia.info.  The Bangladesh website will include a 
variety of features, including: 
    Up-to-date news bulletins; 
    Consolidated directory of services (including NGOs, 
community-based groups, police, Ministries and other government 
agencies, telephone hotlines, shelters, and donor agencies); 
    Bangladeshi laws on trafficking, with annotations to ensure 
  easy interpretation by non-legal professionals; 
    Documents and reports from a variety of sources; 
    Highlight pages in which NGOs can share their achievements 
  or the challenges that they face; and 
    Information and links to partners and services in other 
countries. 
 
Sustainability:  Establishment of the www.tipinasia.info website 
for Bangladesh will require a preliminary investment in hardware, 
technical assistance in Bangla language support, website 
construction, and other development costs.  The Asia Foundation 
will coordinate the preliminary establishment of the Bangladesh 
website and associated technical support and training needs.  The 
  The 
Foundation will identify a local partner organization that will 
gradually assume responsibility for administration and updating 
of the website.  Consultations and information sharing by 
Foundation program staff to date suggest that counter-trafficking 
organizations will be eager to contribute in posting information 
and sustaining the website as they begin to draw on it for 
information exchange and coordination. 
 
Objective 2: To strengthen the capacity of the Ministry of 
Foreign Affairs and Bangladeshi foreign service officers to 
assist and protect Bangladeshi victims of trafficking 
 
The Foundation proposes to hone a more effective application of 
legal protection mechanisms in the work of Bangladeshi Foreign 
Service officers serving in embassies in destination countries 
for trafficked Bangladeshis.  Improvements in the collection, 
documentation, management, and application of information and 
evidence-balancing the rights and interests of victims and those 
who give evidence on their behalf-are required if the newly- 
formed anti-trafficking units and prosecutors are to realize 
increasing numbers of successful prosecutions and convictions. 
 
Activity 2.1: Increasing the capacity of the Ministry of Foreign 
Affairs and Foreign Service officers and establishing victim 
identification and repatriation mechanisms within Bangladeshi 
embassies abroad 
 
The government of Bangladesh recently changed its policy on 
trafficking victim repatriation mechanisms, shifting victim 
identification and citizenship assessment responsibilities from 
embassies and high commissions to the Home Ministry in Dhaka. 
Accordingly, any initial information on possible trafficking 
victims collected by foreign police, high commission officers, or 
others cannot be processed on the ground, but instead has to be 
directed to the Home Ministry in Dhaka for processing.  This 
arrangement results in significant delays in the repatriation of 
individuals deemed to be Bangladeshi citizens and trafficking 
victims, and often leads to denials of citizenship or 
repatriation assistance due to the paucity of information with 
which the Home Ministry makes determinations.  Foreign Service 
officers no longer have the opportunity to investigate and 
revisit the case of a possible trafficking victim at the site and 
to use this information to make a citizenship determination; 
rather, they now have only one opportunity to transmit adequate 
case information to the Home Ministry in Dhaka. 
 
With the new arrangement, the fate of Bangladeshi trafficking 
victims abroad now relies even more heavily on the ability of 
Bangladeshi embassy and high commission officers to swiftly and 
thoroughly collect information for the determination of victim 
status and citizenship and to transmit it to the Home Ministry in 
Dhaka.  In addition, the information collected is critical in 
pursuing and prosecuting traffickers. 
 
To enhance the protection of internationally trafficked victims 
by Bangladeshi embassies and high commissions and to increase the 
quality of evidence gathered for the prosecution of cross-border 
traffickers, The Asia Foundation proposes to expand its pilot 
counter-trafficking training program for Bangladesh Foreign 
Ministry officers.  In 2005, the Foundation launched a pilot 
training program for entry-level Foreign Service officers at the 
invitation of the Principal of the Foreign Service Academy (FSA) 
and with the keen endorsement of the Foreign Secretary.  The 
pilot training program features a half-day curriculum that covers 
the mechanics of victim interview, assessment of trafficking 
victim status and citizenship, and repatriation protocol 
standards, given to probationers to begin the 
institutionalization of these victim handling mechanisms within 
the Foreign Ministry.  Based on the positive response of the 
principal, faculty, and students of the FSA and the Foreign 
Ministry, the Foundation proposes to expand the training module 
to a full day and to target a combination of entry-level officers 
and, in particular, mid-level career officers.  The expanded 
training program will include guest speakers such as prosecutors 
and local anti-trafficking practitioners, and feature a sharing 
of best practices from diplomats and visiting officials, 
including U.S. Embassy and State Department officials. 
 
Sustainability:  The Foundation and the Bangladeshi Foreign 
Ministry aim to institutionalize a standard trafficking victim 
repatriation protocol into Bangladeshi embassies.  After 
completing training programs for entry-level Foreign Service 
officers and several classes of mid-level officers, the 
curriculum and all materials developed will be incorporated into 
the standard training portfolios of the FSA.  In addition, the 
development of a training-of-trainers curriculum will ensure that 
the Ministry has the capacity to conduct training programs on 
both a regular and as-needed basis, in a sustainable manner.  The 
Foundation training team will continue to provide specialized 
training support as requested, and to provide technical 
assistance to Ministry counterparts in refining training 
curricula or introducing new programs. 
 
VII. Monitoring and Evaluation 
 
The Asia Foundation has been at the forefront of efforts to build 
a results-based orientation into its programming.  In designing 
and implementing programs, the Foundation specifies the project 
objectives, activities to be implemented, evaluation criteria, 
substantive reporting requirements, performance indicators, and 
financial management and reporting procedures to be followed, and 
works closely with local partners in determining respective roles 
in data collection, analysis, and reporting.  The Foundation 
tracks the progress of activities implemented through a series of 
monitoring and evaluation steps, including regular meetings with 
project partners. These allow the Foundation to assess progress, 
remove constraints, and respond to new opportunities as programs 
proceed.  Technical assistance is provided as needed to ensure 
quality and timely project completion.  The Foundation will 
develop a comprehensive Monitoring and Evaluation Plan in 
consultation with local partners and work closely with its 
partners in collecting, documenting, and analyzing information 
and reporting results and lessons learned. 
 
VIII. Asia Foundation Capacity 
 
The Asia Foundation is a non-profit, non-governmental 
organization committed to the development of a peaceful, 
prosperous, and open Asia-Pacific region. The Foundation supports 
programs in Asia that help improve governance and law, economic 
reform 
and development, women's participation, and international 
relations. Drawing on 52 years of experience in Asia, the 
Foundation collaborates with private and public partners to 
support leadership and institutional development, exchanges, and 
policy research.  With a network of 18 offices throughout Asia, 
an office in Washington, D.C., and its headquarters in San 
Francisco, the Foundation addresses these issues on both a 
country and regional level. 
 
The Foundation has maintained a resident office and country 
program in Bangladesh continuously since 1954.  Through a 
combination of grants, technical assistance, and operational 
activities, the Foundation supports the efforts of local partners 
in government, civil society, and the private sector to promote 
more responsive and accountable governance, broad-based economic 
growth, advancement of basic rights and security, and enhanced 
dialogue and understanding between Bangladesh and other countries 
in the region.  In all programs, the Foundation places high 
priority on advancing the role of women in Bangladeshi society. 
 
The Foundation is a leader in the fight against trafficking in 
persons in the Asia-Pacific region.  It recognizes that to have a 
meaningful impact on trafficking, transnational solutions are 
critical.  Through its 18 offices and network of partners across 
the Asia-Pacific region, the Foundation has a distinctive ability 
to convene policymakers, practitioners, and advocates who plan 
and co-execute concrete local, national, bilateral, and regional 
initiatives to combat trafficking. 
 
Foundation programs in twelve countries: 
      Support government and non-governmental initiatives to stop 
     trafficking; 
    Promote communication and coordination among actors working 
to combat trafficking; 
      Advance legal rights education for vulnerable groups; 
      Support legal aid services for victims and legal education 
     for police, judges, and other law enforcement officials and 
     agencies; 
    Provide public education (particularly in at-risk 
communities) on the dangers of trafficking and self-protection; 
      Promote laws and policies to combat trafficking; 
king; 
      Support advocacy campaigns to hold government accountable 
     for establishing and enforcing anti-trafficking laws; 
    Provide small loans, vocational training, and other 
resources to increase economic opportunities for vulnerable 
groups; and 
      Fund shelters and other services for victims. 
 
 
¶3.  Budget Breakout 
 
 
 
LINE ITEM                YEAR 1     YEAR 2   TOTAL 
 
TOTAL 
¶I. PROGRAM ACTIVITY COSTS 
¶1. Integrated Community Anti-Trafficking Program 
1.1 Baseline research 
    and community planning         30,000 
$30,000 
1.2 Community programs         102,000     106,000 
208,000 
 
1.3 Enhancing formal 
    standards observation 
    in shelters             3,000  3,000   6,000 
1.4 National-level dialogue 
and information sharing     2,000  3,000   5,000 
 
Sub-total:                137,000  112,000 249,000 
 
¶2. Improved Communication, Information 
Sharing, and Coordination Through ICT: 
TIPinAsia/Bangladesh 
 
2.1 Website design, 
hosting, technical support, 
t, 
and administration        25,000   7,000   32,000 
 
2.2 Information collection 
and coding                  5,000  4,000    9,000 
 
2.3 Collaboration meetings         2,000    3,000 5,000 
 
2.4 Facilitation of access 
to users in remote areas   5,000  5,000    10,000 
 
2.5 Follow-up coordination 
and information sharing projects   6,000   7,000 
13,000 
 
Sub-total:                 43,000  26,000   69,000 
 
¶3. Training Foreign Service Officers to Protect and 
Assist Trafficking Victims 
3.1 Training Courses        8,000  10,000  18,000 
 
3.2 Curriculum and 
materials development      2,000    3,000  5,000 
 
Sub-total:                 10,000  13,000  23,000 
 
Total Program Activities:   190,000     151,000 
341,000 
 
II. PROGRAM MANAGEMENT COSTS 
¶1. Personnel              21,305   20,719   42,024 
¶2. Staff Travel 
(domestic and international 
 airfares, ground 
transportation, and per diem)      5,449   5,721 
11,170 
 
¶3. Other Direct Costs      10,038  10,294  20,332 
 
Total Program 
Management Costs:         36,792   36,734  73,526 
 
TOTAL DIRECT COSTS:      226,792   187,734 414,526 
 
III. INDIRECT COSTS @ 14 percent  31,751   26,283 
58,034 
 
GRAND TOTAL               $258,543           $214,017 
$472,560 
 
 
¶4.  Embassy Point of Contact is Denise Jobin Welch, Political 
Section, 880-2-885-5500 x 2148, jobinwelchdi@state.gov