In a welcome move, the US has hailed Pakistan's performance in controlling the menace of human trafficking and has removed Pakistan from the ‘Tier 2 watch list’ and upgraded it to Tier 2 list pertaining to human trafficking, citing the progress on the issue in Pakistan as encouraging and laudable.

Though it does not mean that the menace has been totally eliminated in the country, at least it lauds the government's efforts to control the menace to some extent by making significant and concerted efforts. Though there still needs a lot to be done to curb and wipe out this barbaric practice completely from society, yet the efforts are heading in the right direction. 

As per this report, Pakistan demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared with the previous reporting period, considering the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, if any, on its anti-trafficking capacity; therefore, Pakistan was upgraded to Tier 2," said the report. The news is encouraging in a way that now Pakistan is out of the danger zone of the watch list which was like a Damocles Sword hanging on it as countries under the Tier 2 Watch list can be penalized with sanctions due to noncompliance with the international standards.

  It may be recalled here that our country remained on the watch list from 2015 to 2017 but was latter upgraded to Tier 2 in 2018 but then the Govt authorities became complacent and the human traffickers became active and went on the rampage due to which the country was again downgraded to 'Watch List' during the corona pandemic in 2020 and remained on the list in 2021. Maybe the government was busy on the corona control front and the human traffickers made good use of the occasion.  As per available data, there were over thirty-two thousand cases of human trafficking in 2020 as compared to around twenty thousand in 2019.

The actual number must be very high as these are only those cases that were reported in the media. It may be mentioned here that the 2018 Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Act (PTPA) can help curb this menace but it has fallen prey to lack of implementation. Under this Act, the government's central and provincial departments can enhance the implementation of standard operating procedures (SOPs) on victim identification and referral and can provide training to more stakeholders but it is not implemented in the real sense of the word so far.

For the Government will have to provide funds and other resources to its provincial centres for implementing the National Action Plan (NAP) and other rules. As a matter of fact, human trafficking is an international issue. In fact, it can be termed as a well-organized and multi-billion dollar crime that is rampant in the entire world.

However, during the corona pandemic, it become more lucrative as during the lockdowns, people were pressed for money and food and they became easy prey to the human traffickers, who lured them into false promises of providing them jobs abroad. Since our country was also badly affected by the corona pandemic, our poor people became vulnerable to this menace and fell prey to the heinous practice.   As a matter of fact, our country is being termed a place of source, transit, and destination for the victims of human trafficking. The smuggling of migrants is also rampant in our country which can be gauged from the fact that an estimated three lakhs people are trafficked every year from Pakistan as per unofficial data. This heinous practice is getting new dimensions and an estimated one million persons are added to the victims' list every year. Due to extreme poverty and lack of work opportunities, our people fall prey to the promises of human traffickers, their agents working for various travel agencies, who show dreams of greener pastures and economic turn-around to poor people by working abroad but the majority of such persons are caught in a web of miseries.  The majority of the agents are fake and they only mint money from the masses as they do the entire process illegally just for minting money from the victims.  As reported, around half of the 4,582 registered overseas employment promoters are fake and they have spread a net of fraudulent agents who befool the poor people. According to a report by Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, the practice of trafficking is rampant in the country. In its report titled Modern slavery: Trafficking in Women and Girls in Pakistan, the menace is going both at local, national and international levels, and at every level fraudulent traveling agents are involved in this practice.  The report also contains a special portion on the bonded labours, forced begging rings and prostitution houses being run by human traffickers in the country.

The Law Enforcement Agencies and police do not pay serious attention to the cases of missing women. As reported police officials treat most of such cases as elopement cases which is not the right approach. It has been reported that victims do not approach the police who instead of helping them start victimizing them to mint money from them.

Published in The Daily National Courier, August, 16 2022

Like Business on Facebook, follow @DailyNCourier on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.