The plight of Rohingya women from Burma trafficked in Pakistan ?We have come all the way here, not just because we were trying to escape poverty and find a way to earn a better living like the Bangladeshis, but because it was our only option to save our lives.”(Interview with a Rohingya woman in Karachi on 22.11.99)...Rohingya women from Burma are trapped. In Burma they are deprived of citizenship, and face wide-scale atrocities committed by the military regime. In Bangladesh they are unwanted refugees, threatened with repatriation or deportation, and unable to meet their most basic needs. For many, the only option left to them in order to survive is being trafficked to Pakistan to face an uncertain future that often holds further abuses. During the journey across the subcontinent they can be caught in the web of ruthless traffickers. At every stage of the trip they are vulnerable to sexual violence, physical abuse, as well as other forms of exploitation, whether in the hands of the trafficker, the police, border guards, or while in detention. In Pakistan, some have been sold into slavery and prostitution, while many more survive as illegal immigrants in extreme poverty in the squalor of the Karachi slums. Others have spent many years in jail, detained under the Pakistan Foreigners Act or under the Zina section of the Hudood Ordinance. Wherever they are, Rohingya women are denied protection as well as assistance, and suffer the worst human rights abuses..."