IJM launches new office in Bangladesh!
Summary:
IJM has launched a brand-new programme to stop sex trafficking of children in Bangladesh.
The office is led by Claire Wilkinson, an expert prosecutor from Scotland with over 10 years’ experience leading teams through IJM programmes across Africa and Europe.
Right now, up to 50% of people in the sex trade in Bangladesh are children. This means potentially 100,000 children being trafficked at any one time - twice the number of people who attend Glastonbury festival each year.
Young children are enduring extreme sexual, physical and mental violence. Traffickers currently face little to no consequences.
When investigating a brothel in Bangladesh, IJM’s Marie Riba was struck by one 16-year-old girl. This young mum is sometimes forced to leave her baby under the bed “while she attends to customers.”
It’s time to end this abuse. In December 2023, IJM formally registered our newest programme office in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Since then, the team has been carefully crafting programme plans alongside local authorities, survivor leaders and potential partners. These detailed plans were approved by the government in April 2025 -allowing us to formally begin our protection programme.
Claire shared, “Together we have learned so much about the heartbreaking sexual exploitation plaguing Bangladesh, and we feel the intense urgency to end this brutal abuse of children.
“With the lessons of nearly 30 years of IJM programming across the world and the deep engagement of local partners, the team and I are keen to start work in Dhaka and expand the programme to protect those in need.”
IJM aims to fill a critical gap in the protection of children in Bangladesh by strengthening the public justice system response to measurably reduce the prevalence of child sexual exploitation.
Built on the success of previous programmes in Asia, the goal of the project will be to ensure the public justice system performs sustainably and in a trauma-informed manner, resulting in the protection of children at a large scale.
In our first phase, IJM will work with government agencies and NGOs to study the current state of child sexual exploitation within Bangladesh. We will then collaborate to bring children to safety, bring criminals to justice, support survivors to heal, and strengthen the justice system.
We look forward to hiring an expert local team and engaging deeply with our partners in the justice community in Bangladesh.
If you’d like to support this critical work as it begins in Bangladesh, the best way is to sign up to become a Freedom Partner now >>
If you sign up before 18th October 2025, your monthly gifts will be DOUBLED up to a cumulative total of £7,500, thanks to a generous donor.