The Asian Women's Human Rights Council organised the court of women in association with the UNDP and UBINIG to protest the injustice suffered by the women of South Asia.

The symbolic court of women on trafficking and HIV/AIDS was held at China-Bangladesh Friendship Conference Centre in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar.

Trafficking in humans for profit and exploitation is said to be the third largest form of illegal trade after drugs and arms dealing and has gained the status of international crisis that requires multilateral responses from states. The governments need strategies to combat the sophisticated networks of trafficking throughout the world.

More often the anti-trafficking initiatives both from the state and civil society are concentrated on illegal migration and criminal prosecution. The conflation of trafficking with migration and movement on the one hand and prostitution and sex work on the other influences the views of the way of women's movements, both internally and externally.

Lack of definitional and conceptual clarity and half-baked policies on trafficking continue to deny the victims justice and fuel rape, forced prostitution, labour exploitation, slavery apart from the stigma of HIV and perhaps the finality of AIDS.

The testimonies during the session at the symbolic court attempt to broaden the scope, notion and definition of trafficking through its different faces like forced marriage, camel jockeying, forced adoption, forced labour, domestic work and prostitution.

Testimonies of women from the South Asian countries were delivered in front of a jury board comprising eminent personalities like Winnie Mandela, president of Women's League, African National Congress, South Africa; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak of Columbia University, USA/India; Salma Sobhan, lawyer and founder member of Ain O Shalish Kendra; and Faryal Ghaur, women's rights activist and artist of Pakistan.

The members of the jury listened to the live testimonies and viewed the videotapes of the women throughout the day. One of the testimonies given by an Indian woman aptly suggested the virtue of organising such a symbolic court.

The story of the Indian woman revealed a peculiar idea of a brothel where male customers with HIV-positive believe that they would be cured of their disease if they could have sex with young women. She is one of many young women systematically becoming victims of the ignorant and heinous practice of men.

The testimonies also revealed that institutions of the state like the police, judiciary and health systems, supposed to ensure the rights of citizens to justice, redress or care, are often the greatest violators of the rights of the people, particularly the poor and the vulnerable.

The court issued a 12-point statement, including a need to improve the quality of grassroots education for the long-term eradication of patriarchal values, which it said are one of the causes of human trafficking and other forms of violence against women.

"We want a regional as well an international court with transborder jurisdiction to allow perpetrators to be punished," said Salma Sobhan, also a leading lawyer in Bangladesh.