Rebuilding Bangladesh’s Repute in Overseas Labour Markets

Bangladesh's overseas labour sector tells two stories at once. The headline story is one of triumph: $32.8 billion in remittances in 2025, up by 22 per cent from the previous year. Some 1,130,757 workers went abroad, whose contribution has helped stabilise foreign exchange reserves and boost the national economy. The second story, quieter but more consequential, is one of an international reputation under steady erosion. Market closures, trafficking scandals, irregular migration deaths, and incidents of individual violence abroad have collectively painted a picture of Bangladesh that its millions of honest, hard-working migrants do not deserve and that the state has been too slow to challenge.
Not all reputational damage stems from genuine wrongdoing. Sometimes the law itself becomes a weapon. A case I encountered recently as part of my work with the recruiting sector explains the point. A woman had migrated to Saudi Arabia as a school cleaner through a registered agency, with full documentation and proper BMET clearance. Everything was lawful. Months later, her husband filed a human trafficking case against the agency, alleging she had been sent under false pretences and subjected to sexual exploitation. When the agency made contact, the woman said she was safe, doing exactly the job she had agreed to, and that her husband's complaint had nothing to do with her welfare and everything to do with their troubled marriage. As an association, we formally wrote to the Bangladesh Embassy in Riyadh requesting a consular visit and a welfare report for submission to the court. This episode exposes a structural gap: there is no fast, credible mechanism to distinguish genuine trafficking from malicious litigation, one that protects ethical agencies and migrant workers at the same time.
This sits within a larger pattern of reputational harm rooted in systemic failure. In Malaysia, a syndicate embedded itself in the official recruitment infrastructure and charged Bangladeshi agencies reportedly $5,000–$6,600 per worker, even though the legal fee cap was just $660. Workers borrowed against family land, arrived to find no jobs, and had no recourse. The Daily Star and UN agencies jointly described it as forced labour and trafficking. Malaysia suspended Bangladeshi recruitment in March 2024, stranding 50,000 workers already mid-process. In Bahrain, a single act of individual violence, a Bangladeshi muezzin, Kamal Uddin, murdered the Bahraini imam of Bin Sidda mosque in Muharraq, Abdul Jalil Hamud, triggering collective punishment. Bahrain has informally blocked new work visas for Bangladeshis since 2018, effectively closing a market of over 106,000 workers. 
Beyond the Gulf, the picture is grimmer still. In 2025, Bangladesh became the leading nationality crossing the central Mediterranean to Italy, a route the UNHCR calls one of the world's deadliest. Over 20,000 Bangladeshis made the crossing in 2025 alone, almost all departing from Libya, according to migration researchers. Libya itself has been a killing ground. In May 2020, 26 Bangladeshi migrants were killed in a trafficking warehouse in Mizdah. In November 2024, four Bangladeshis were shot dead by traffickers after a boat capsized near Al Khums. In March 2025, Libyan authorities dismantled a trafficking ring involving two Bangladeshi nationals and a Libyan national, luring victims with promises of European jobs before holding them for ransom. Meanwhile, a Dhaka-based agency was reported by The Daily Star to have trafficked around 20 Bangladeshis to Russia over two years; one victim was killed in a drone strike. The US State Department's 2024 TIP Report placed Bangladesh on Tier 2, citing persistent structural weaknesses in its anti-trafficking framework.
 The cumulative effect of these incidents on Bangladesh's international image is not theoretical; it is measurable. Worker deployment fell 22 per cent in 2024, with the UAE alone declining by over 50 per cent. More than 470,000 migrant workers returned home in six years without completing their contracts. The government's response has been episodic at best, with market closures absorbed without a coherent recovery strategy and diplomatic missions abroad that remain under-resourced for labour protection work. The recruiting agencies, too, carry some of this weight. While the vast majority of BMET-licensed agencies operate within the law, the sector has not done enough to self-regulate visibly, to pursue rogue members through its own mechanisms, or to build the kind of public-facing accountability that would insulate ethical operators from being lumped in with criminal ones. The Saudi Arabia case described above is not an exception; it represents a recurring dynamic in which the industry is presumed guilty and must scramble to prove otherwise, while the legal tools to do so quickly remain unavailable.
Rebuilding Bangladesh's international reputation in overseas labour markets requires a shift from reactive crisis management to proactive institutional architecture, anchored in coordinated diplomatic, regulatory, and protection mechanisms. First, undertake high-level diplomatic visits with key destination countries to rebuild trust, reopen constrained labour markets, and signal strong political commitment, backed by clear reform agendas and accountability measures at the state level. Second, introduce a regulated, merit-based recruitment framework that rewards compliant agencies with priority market access while isolating unethical operators, ensuring that ethical agencies are recognised rather than treated as equal suspects alongside criminal actors.
Third, strengthen embassies by establishing a dedicated crisis-response authority to issue verified welfare reports within 72 hours of formal requests, and implement fast-track legal procedures that require such verification before trafficking cases are admitted, thereby preventing misuse of the law while protecting genuine victims. Fourth, disrupt irregular migration routes, particularly the Libya–Italy corridor, through targeted nationwide awareness campaigns and the urgent operationalisation of the Bangladesh–Italy MoU signed in May 2025, alongside strict prosecution of trafficking networks. Finally, shift from volume to value by enforcing skills certification and language training as a quality assurance mechanism, repositioning Bangladeshi workers as skilled, reliable, and competitive in global labour markets.
Bangladesh’s workers are not a liability to be managed. The $32.8 billion they sent home in 2025 reflects their sacrifice, not policy efficiency. What they deserve is a state and an industry that actively protects their dignity, defends their reputation abroad, and builds institutions commensurate with their contribution. The cost of inaction is not abstract; it is measured in closed markets, loss of life in transit corridors, and families left in prolonged uncertainty. Rebuilding this international image is therefore not only a governance imperative but also an economic strategy, one that can make the BNP government’s target of sending 1 crore workers abroad within five years both realistic and achievable.
______________________________________
The writer is a researcher, currently working at Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA). He can be reached at [email protected]