reduced or scrapped free school meal vouchers over the school holidays. and artefacts forcibly removed from benin city during a british military incursion in 1897 will be returned to nigeria by a london museum. now on bbc news, shrimps, saris and guns. faarea masud investigates how the demand for shrimp is destroying land that women have farmed for centuries in bangladesh. along the coastlines and riverbeds of rural bangladesh, thousands of hectares where rice was once grown have been converted into intensive shrimp farms, catering to a multibillion dollar global industry.
since the explosion of the industry in the 805, when the world s appetite for this luxury food grew, there have been increasing allegations of violence and land grabbing by criminal gangs. i ve come to bangladesh to hear first hand about the hidden abuses in the industry and the detrimental effect of saltwater shrimp farms on these women s health and livelihoods. poor people are being exploited by the rich and powerful and poverty is not being eradicated. these shrimp are so expensive, and poor people can t even dream of buying them.
what solutions would you propose to improve that condition for the farms? whilst bangladeshi shrimp exporters like shyamul push for growth in the industry, the country s law is also at work. environmental lawyer rizwana hassan has been fighting cases around saltwater shrimp farms for years. a substantial amount of agricultural land owned by the poorfarmers are being forcibly grabbed by shrimp cultivators, but for the government it is export earning, but it is actually earning by a few. totally damaging the traditional
it s taken me years to gain exclusive access to the working conditions of this remote, often secretive community. now these women farmers are fighting back to protect their rights. frozen shrimp exports are worth about $500 million to the bangladeshi economy. after garments, seafood is the country s biggest export. most of it s sold to europe.
and when you see that your land is underwater and you have no chance of getting it back, you are forced to work in the shrimp industry. bangladeshi s department of fisheries said in a statement that more than 250,000 rural families are dependent on shrimp farming for their livelihoods. it is said that most of the people employed in shrimp cultivation in bangladesh are marginalised people who live in coastal areas and are victims of climate change, sea level rise, saline water intrusion and loss of livelihood. it added that for a decade or more these people have been maintaining high global standards and that the government conducts awareness activities, training, formation of trade unions and that it supports arbitration processes based on labour rules and social compliances. but not all of bangladesh s shrimp