HUMAN TRAFFICKING

 

 

 

Development: The human trafficking problem —Syed Mohammad Ali.

There are hardly any secure shelters for the victims of human smuggling. There are yet scant facilities available for provision of legal advice, psychological counseling and medical treatment to help them overcome the trauma of being trafficked

Although human trafficking and human smuggling are parts of the larger phenomenon of migration, both are illegal and irregular. Yet it is important not to confuse the phenomenon of human trafficking with human smuggling. A trafficked person is invariably a victim of deception or coercion, whereas a smuggled migrant enters into the arrangement with international human smugglers with consent of being taken abroad though illegal means.

There are human trafficking situations where a person who pays to willingly be smuggled to another country ends up facing unexpected oppressive and exploitative conditions. But human trafficking is generally considered to be much more abusive, and a graver crime, than human smuggling.

According to the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report, about 800,000 people are being trafficked across national borders annually. Around 225,000 people are trafficked annually from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan alone. Nearly 80 percent of these transnational trafficked victims are women and girls, mainly for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation.

Pakistan is considered a significant source, destination, and transit country for human trafficking. Afghan women and girls are commonly sold into forced marriages and prostitution in Pakistan. Pakistan is also used as a transit country for human trafficking from Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reported in 2007 that Karachi has become a major transit point for women being trafficked to the Gulf and further west via the Mandh Billoh border in Iran. Ansar Burney Trust, another rights-based organization, has also been trying to highlight this disturbing trend.

Moreover, major internal trafficking is also taking place within our country and it is also linked to cross-border trafficking. A study by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child found over 8,000 children having been trafficked out of Sindh by criminal gangs between 2001 and 2003 alone.

There is still a dearth of studies on the exact number of internally trafficked people across the country, and their correlation to international trafficking. For instance, this would include young girls who were originally trafficked to work in the red light areas of major Pakistani cities, thereafter ending up being sent onwards to the Gulf countries.

Much of the existing information concerning human trafficking remains anecdotal. Little information is available about the methodologies used to arrive at different estimations, which in turn makes it difficult to assess if human trafficking and human smuggling are being differentiated or not.

Recently, the advisor to the prime minister on interior informed the Senate that a total of 313,153 Pakistani nationals were deported by various countries from January 1999 to October 2008. The overwhelming majority of these deportees were said to be illegal migrants entering another country illegally or staying there without due authorization. However, since crucial data concerning the gender, age-groups, and occupations abroad of these ‘illegal immigrants’ was not provided, distinguishing whether they had been trafficked or smuggled abroad cannot be ascertained.

Much more work will have to be done on the ground in order to be able to obtain more accurate estimates. In the border town on Taftan, for instance, the Federal Investigation Authority, which has a major role in preventing human smuggling, does not even maintain any records of the age of illegal migrants intercepted by them. In Gwadar, the local FIA office kept insisting that under-aged human smuggling is not a problem, but a physical verification of their own registers showed that there were 99 cases involving minors in 2007 alone. How many of these minors were being trafficked against their will would also require further investigations by the relevant authorities.

A Peshawar-based NGO in collaboration with Action-Aid Pakistan and the European Commission has undertaken a useful and comprehensive study of existing policies and programmers concerning this problem, from which much of the above presented information has been cited.

This report also aptly points out that while Pakistan has extradition treaties with 29 countries for apprehending and transferring criminals, such treaties do not exist between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka and some Central Asian countries from where much human trafficking to Pakistan is reportedly taking place. Cooperation with India is also necessary as it is the main transit country for the illegal flows from Bangladesh and Burma.

Illegal migration is a multi-faceted phenomenon tackling which will require coordination between varied ministries, including foreign affairs; health; interior; labour, manpower and overseas Pakistanis; social welfare; and women’s development. The experience so far shows that inter-ministerial coordination within our political culture is hard to achieve. Nevertheless, the government cannot achieve significant progress in terms of curbing this phenomenon without a comprehensive approach.

Introducing travel and personal identity documents that cannot be easily forged, improving document checks and surveillance at points of entry and departure, and taking strict action against those found guilty of involvement in this activity are necessary measures which evidently need to be bolstered within our country. Law enforcement agencies must also be aware of the difference between human smuggling and human trafficking and how to deal with people involved in these very different activities.

Moreover, the victims of illegal trafficking also need protection but there are hardly any secure shelters for the victims of human smuggling. There are yet scant facilities available for provision of legal advice, psychological counseling and medical treatment to help them overcome the trauma of being trafficked, and to get justice for the crime that has been perpetrated against them.

In order to help address this blatant victimization of human beings, raising the basic awareness of the public at large concerning the potential risks posed by human smugglers, as well as increasing general know-how about probable tactics used by such criminals to guile their unsuspecting victims, are necessary so that less people fall prey to the scarring experience of being trafficked.

The writer is a researcher. He can be contacted at ali@policy.hu