ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses upon gender and trafficking and seeks to complete the debate on trafficking by demonstrating its absence in laws on disaster management. The world today is a witness to the mass exodus of people migrating from one place to another due to conflict, war, natural calamities, ethnic cleansing, terrorism and insurgency or simply in search of livelihood options. There seems to be a thin line between migration, human smuggling, human trafficking and other related issues. South Asia happens to be a home to the second-largest number of internationally trafficked persons, estimated to be around 150,000 persons annually.i India, Bangladesh and Nepal have been identified as the major source countries for women and children being trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation, involuntary domestic servitude and bondage of debt. Disaster only doubles the hardships faced in such areas. There are a slender collection of laws which are difficult to implement across the countries and international borders, thus being unable to protect the cross-border victims.
