A migrant woman arrives at Dhaka airport unable to state her own name, address, or family identity, and she is eventually identified through fingerprint records after days of uncertainty. This woman was identified as Rizia Begum, whose children had already accepted her death after years without contact.
When she was finally returned to them, she was physically present but psychologically absent, unable to speak or recognize those waiting for her.
This moment is not an isolated tragedy or a catastrophic breakdown; it is a visible entry point into a broader and deeply normalized crisis that shapes the lives of Bangladeshi women migrant workers.
Recent reporting further illustrates that such experiences recur across cases rather than emerge as rare incidents. A Dhaka Tribune investigation documented women returning six months pregnant after repeated sexual abuse and being transferred between multiple employers, while others describe being trafficked to the United Arab Emirates under the promise of domestic work and then forced into sexual exploitation without pay.
Testimonies from returnee workers consistently describe beatings, starvation, confinement, and forced labour beyond agreed conditions, while some report attempting self-harm or suicide as a means of escaping sustained violence.
These accounts are not anecdotal or exceptional; they are structurally produced outcomes of how migration is organized and managed.
According to data cited by Dhaka Tribune from BRAC’s migration program, at least 70,000 Bangladeshi women have returned from Gulf countries over the past seven years, with the majority reporting various forms of abuse.
During the same period, around 800 bodies of women migrant workers have been repatriated to Bangladesh in coffins, many officially categorized as suicide despite persistent concerns from families about signs of physical violence.
Government data also indicates that more than 6,000 women were victims of trafficking between 2012 and 2025, while international estimates suggest that a significant proportion of migrant women workers experience abuse but do not report it due to fear, stigma, or lack of access to support.
Across Gulf countries, where more than 80% of Bangladeshi women migrant workers are employed as domestic workers, there is extensive and well-documented evidence of systemic abuse.
As reflected in reporting and embassy communications referenced in the Dhaka Tribune news report, workers frequently flee abusive households and seek shelter at embassies, sometimes on a near-daily basis, while many others are repatriated through travel passes without their complaints being formally recorded, effectively erasing their experiences from legal processes.
Survivors consistently describe conditions of confinement, food deprivation, denial of wages, sexual violence, and being transferred or “sold” between employers, further deepening their vulnerability.
These patterns are closely linked to labour regimes such as the kafala sponsorship system, widely practiced across Gulf countries, which grants employers disproportionate control over migrant workers’ mobility, employment, and legal status.
Within this framework, workers are often unable to leave abusive environments without risking detention or deportation, while access to legal recourse remains severely limited. Under such conditions, exploitation is not an exception or deviation; it is structurally enabled and sustained through legal and institutional arrangements that prioritize control over protection.
At the same time, Bangladesh’s role as a sending state remains central to sustaining this cycle. Recruitment processes are frequently mediated through informal brokers and agencies that provide incomplete or misleading information about working conditions, wages, and destinations, while many women migrate without adequate training, language skills, or awareness of their rights.
When abuse occurs, institutional responses remain inconsistent and often ineffective, as complaints go undocumented, legal cases are not pursued, and accountability mechanisms fail once workers are returned to Bangladesh. Responsibility is diffused across institutions, but the consequences remain concentrated on the women themselves.
Return, in this context, does not signify safety or resolution. Women often come back physically injured, psychologically traumatized, and financially depleted, having received little or no compensation for their labour.
Upon return, many encounter stigma, suspicion, and silence within their own communities, which discourages disclosure and further isolates survivors. A national narrative that celebrates migrant workers as contributors to remittance income continues to exist alongside a refusal to confront the violence and exploitation through which that income is produced.
What emerges from these intersecting realities is not a simple absence of policy but a sustained inability, and at times unwillingness, to implement protections in ways that would meaningfully disrupt this system.
Bilateral agreements, migration policies, and international commitments formally recognize the rights of migrant workers, yet these frameworks rarely translate into meaningful protection at the points where women are most vulnerable, particularly in recruitment, workplace monitoring, and post-return support.
Migration itself is not the problem; for many women, it is a necessary strategy for economic survival and family support. However, the conditions under which this migration occurs raise urgent questions about the value placed on women’s lives, labour, and dignity.
Ensuring safer migration requires enforceable accountability mechanisms across both sending and receiving contexts, along with accessible systems of support that do not disappear once a worker returns home.
Until such structural changes are implemented, the stories of abused, missing, and deceased migrant women workers will continue to emerge with disturbing regularity.
These are not unknown realities or isolated breakdowns; they are the foreseeable consequences of a system that remains intact because it is collectively tolerated and insufficiently challenged.
Tanveer Anoy is an archivist, activist, author, and is currently a PhD student in Feminist Studies at the University of Minnesota. They can be reached at tanveeranoy@gmail.com.