National Assembly’s Legislative Committee recommends amending Penal Code of Bhutan’s section 154 on human trafficking.
“A defendant shall be guilty of the offence of trafficking a person if the defendant recruits, transports, sells or buys, harbours or receives a person through the use of threat or force or deception within, into or outside of Bhutan for any illegal purpose,” states the section 154.
In the consultative meeting held yesterday, the committee’s Chair Ritu Raj Chhettri said the section 154 needs clarity.
“When it comes to human trafficking, it only talks about the people being trafficked, taken outside of Bhutan kidnapped and they have been taken outside of Bhutan. But it really doesn’t address, it is still ambiguous on people being taken from one Dzongkhag to other, one place to other within the country. So that needs to be ironed out.”
The Committee also pointed out the need to re-define human trafficking.
Ritu Raj Chhetri said trafficking only talks about extradition treaty with other countries.
“To a large extent we don’t have extradition treaty with many countries and even if we have extradition treaty so far it has not been productive and we have not been able to invoke and enforce those. So that is why we need to spell out the definition of the trafficking more precisely.”
The Legislative Committee also discussed and came up with recommendations on other pertinent issues of the Penal Code which need reviews.
A few of the recommendations will be forwarded to the National Law Review Task Force for further review before presenting them in the upcoming session of the Parliament.
