Marriage, family visas, and the new face of trafficking

Early last year, I called the Kazi office (marriage and divorce registry office) in Dhaka’s Mohakhali area, on behalf of a foreign student, to find out how two foreign Muslim citizens can register their marriage in Bangladesh. The Kazi told me that such marriages could be registered under the legal framework governing Muslim marriages, subject to an affidavit, notarisation, and other documents—a pretty straightforward process. When I asked whether many foreign nationals were getting married in Dhaka, he mentioned that a significant number of marriages between Chinese nationals and Bangladeshi women had occurred over the previous two years, particularly through Kazi offices in Banani, Uttara, and Gulshan.

I had previously heard about Bangladeshi women being taken to China from the Chittagong Hill Tracts, but I had never heard of such a large number of marriages. So, I began to dig deeper. I discussed the issue with law enforcement officials working on human trafficking. Around the same time, a judicial officer contacted me to share some allegations he came across of Bangladeshi women being trafficked to China in the name of marriage and subsequently forced into prostitution. He suggested that the matter deserves closer scrutiny.

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Nearly a year later, those concerns look less like isolated rumours and more like a pattern that demands serious attention. Allegations have emerged that legitimate institutions such as marriage registration and family visas are being used to take Bangladeshi women to China, where some are allegedly subjected to deception, coercion, physical torture and sexual exploitation.

For years, when we talked about the trafficking of Bangladeshi women and girls, India was usually the first country that came to mind. But trafficking has always been an evasive, illicit trade, whereas traffickers continue to adapt, changing and developing new routes and tactics. Today, job offers, a visa, or a promise of family reunification can turn into a trafficking method. Even marriages can be exploited.

In our work to prevent trafficking and smuggling of people, we have come across women taken to the Middle East or Malaysia with promises of well-paid jobs, only to have their passports confiscated and their movements restricted. A number of them have alleged forced sexual exploitation and other forms of abuse. A study by Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Programme found that 94 percent of returning women migrants experienced regular physical and mental abuse; 47 percent reported sexual harassment.

Experts, in fact, attribute the decline in women labour migration from Bangladesh in recent years to these allegations of abuse and deception. According to Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) data, 1,05,466 female workers went abroad in 2022. The number dropped by 41 percent to 62,317 in 2025. In the first eight months of this year, 42,719 female workers went abroad through official channels, mostly to Saudi Arabia and Jordan, mainly as unskilled house helps.

The pattern is familiar: where poverty, desperate aspirations to migrate, and weak oversight intersect, new trafficking routes can emerge. That is why the sharp rise in the number of Bangladeshi women travelling to China on family visas deserves scrutiny.

According to data presented at a workshop last month, only seven women travelled from Bangladesh to China on Q-1 family visas in 2021. The number rose to 35 in 2022, then jumped to 1,016 in 2023; in 2024 it was 1,378 and in 2025 it went up to 1,721.

These numbers should lead to the obvious questions: why did Q1 family visas rise so dramatically? How many of these marriages were genuine and voluntary? How many are involved as intermediaries? How many women subsequently returned to Bangladesh? How many lost contact with their families or sought help from the authorities?

The rise in family visa numbers cannot simply be dismissed as an increase in cross-border marriages, because several cases have emerged in recent times that warrant attention.

In 2024, a Chakma woman from Rangamati filed a case alleging that her 21-year-old sister had been taken to Dhaka and forcibly married to a Chinese man. In another complaint, a 21-year-old Marma woman from Khagrachhari alleged that she, too, had been forced to marry a Chinese national.

This August, a 19-year-old woman from Bagerhat alleged that she had been drugged and secretly filmed in an objectionable situation. She said the video was later used to blackmail her into marrying a Chinese man. She was subsequently taken to China, where she alleged that she suffered physical and sexual abuse. She said she later discovered that the marriage had primarily been arranged as a means of taking her to China, with money changing hands in the process. She eventually fled and, with the assistance of Chinese police and the non-government organisation Justice and Care, returned to Bangladesh.

These testimonies should not be ignored.

Women from economically disadvantaged and marginalised communities are always vulnerable to trafficking. Raising awareness among them is therefore important. But the state has responsibilities, too. How can a foreign national marry a Bangladeshi woman, arrange her departure, and complete the necessary procedures without anyone adequately verifying whether the relationship is genuine or whether the marriage is being used as a gateway to exploitation? The objective should not be to make marriages with foreign nationals more difficult for everyone. It should be to prevent exploitation of Bangladeshi women.

The Chinese Embassy in Dhaka appears to recognise the problem. In a notice issued on July 14, it warned Chinese citizens against using illegal marriage brokers and “bride-buying” arrangements or unlicensed matchmaking agents, cautioning that such activities could result in trafficking and other abuses.

But warnings alone will not dismantle trafficking networks. Bangladesh needs a risk-based verification system for marriages involving foreign nationals. Before marriage registration, some questions should be answered as basic safeguards against exploitation. For instance, is the same agency arranging multiple marriages? Are marriages being arranged unusually quickly? Was there a large financial transaction? Did the prospective bride have an opportunity to speak privately and independently? Is there credible information about the prospective spouse?

Information must also flow between institutions. Kazi offices, police, immigration authorities, and the ministries responsible for home and foreign affairs cannot operate in silos when trafficking networks operate across them.

Marriage brokers must come under scrutiny. If someone repeatedly arranges marriages between Bangladeshi women and foreign nationals, the authorities should know who they are, how they operate, and how many marriages they have arranged.

Airports also need mechanisms to identify potential trafficking victims. But this must be done carefully, without harassing subjects of genuine cases of cross-border marriages.

Furthermore, family visa applications submitted to the Chinese Embassy involving marriages with Bangladeshi nationals should be subject to meaningful checks on the authenticity of the relationship and the woman’s free and informed consent. Bangladesh and China should also establish faster channels for sharing information about suspected brokers, suspicious marriages, and trafficking cases. When a woman is found to be at risk, protection, investigation, and repatriation should not depend on bureaucratic delays.

But there is an even bigger lesson here. We cannot fight trafficking only at the border or airport. We have to fight it where dreams are bought and sold: in job advertisements, at marriage brokers’ offices, at Kazi offices, at visa centres, at airports, and, finally, at the destination.

Trafficking does not necessarily begin when a woman crosses a border. It begins much earlier-with a promise—of a good job, a marriage, or a better life.

The challenge is to ensure that these dreams do not become a legal cover for trafficking. Governments, law enforcement agencies, Kazi offices, civil society, the media, and communities must work together to make it harder for traffickers to exploit vulnerable people and to reduce the space in which human trafficking, one of the most heinous forms of organised crime, can thrive.

Shariful Hasan is associate director of Migration Programme and Youth Platform at BRAC.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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