We cannot hide the fact that forced labour and human trafficking is happening in Pakistan on a large scale. Besides trafficking within the country, Pakistan also serves as a transit route for exporting men, women and children to other countries, e.g. the Middle East, Africa and even Europe for forced labour and sexual exploitation. Internally, bonded labour is rampant in Sindh and Punjab provinces but also takes place in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in agriculture and brick making, and to a lesser extent in the mining and carpet-making industries. When bonded labourers attempt to escape, the police return them to the landowners and brick kiln owners who then keep them in chains or in private jails. Girls as young as five years are bought, sold, rented or kidnapped and forced to work in organised begging rings, small shops and factories, and forced into prostitution. Trafficking experts describe this as a system devised to force women and girls into prostitution, including the presence of mandis (markets) where victims are offered for sale. Women sold into forced marriages are often moved by their husbands to cities across borders and forced into the flesh trade in Iran or Afghanistan.
Pakistani women go abroad as domestic servants and, once abroad, many become victims of labour trafficking. False job offers and high recruitment fees charged by licensed Pakistani overseas employment agents, increase their vulnerability to indebtedness. Pakistani workers abroad face restrictions on movement, non-payment of wages, threats and physical and sexual abuse. Traffickers seize passports and travel and identification documents as a means to coerce Pakistani women and girls into prostitution. There are reports of child sex trafficking between Iran and Pakistan, and Pakistani children and adults with disabilities being forced to beg in Iran and Arab countries. Afghan refugees and religious/ethnic minorities are particularly vulnerable to human trafficking.
The government of Pakistan does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking. It does, however, make some lackadaisical efforts to do so. There is a lack of political will and capacity to address trafficking fully, as can be seen from the ineffective law enforcement measures. Government officials’ complicity in human trafficking is another reason for this state of affairs.
The government does not prohibit all forms of trafficking. Several sections in the penal code criminalise some forms of human trafficking, such as slavery, selling a child for prostitution and unlawful compulsory labour, prescribing punishments for these offences that range from fines to life imprisonment. The Prevention and Control of Human Trafficking Ordinance, 2002 (PACHTO), prescribes penalties of seven to 14 years imprisonment. Prescribed penalties for the penal code and PACHTO offences are sufficiently stringent like those prescribed for other serious crimes, such as rape. The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act (BLSA) prohibits bonded labour, with prescribed penalties ranging from two to five years imprisonment. Pakistani officials have yet to secure a conviction under this law. This is because federal laws become applicable in states only after state governments pass a corresponding law. So far, only Punjab has adopted such a law.
The government reported that penal code provisions were used approximately 80 times to prosecute trafficking cases from April 2012 to March 2013, compared with 55 times in 2011. Government officials continued to conflate human smuggling and human trafficking, and the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA’s) anti-trafficking units dealt with undocumented migration and smuggling, in addition to human trafficking. Many police officials and prosecutors did not pursue trafficking cases or simply did not prioritise anti-trafficking activities. The FIA reports that it continues to train officials on trans-national trafficking issues at the FIA academy and experts noted this training covered trafficking with human smuggling.
Some enforcement authorities are hand in glove with the trafficking mafia or affiliated with the political parties who use their social, economic and political clout to protect their involvement in bonded labour. A 2012 International Labour Organisation (ILO) report states that those who use bonded labour have been able to do so with impunity. Some police officials receive bribes to ignore human trafficking activities from brothel owners, landowners and factory owners who subject Pakistanis to forced labour or prostitution. The government of Pakistan did not report any convictions of government employees for alleged complicity in trafficking-related offences during the year 2013. Protection of victims of human trafficking was nominal. The Pakistani authorities do not have systematic methods for identifying trafficking victims and referring them to protective services.
NGOs report that government officials often detain, fine or jail trafficking victims. Rural police return ‘runaway’ bonded labourers to brick kiln owners on the grounds that they tried to avoid repayment of debts. Foreign nationals with no proper documents are detained and charged under the penal code ignoring the possibility that they might be victims of human trafficking. Victims of sex trafficking are often charged with crimes while their traffickers remain free. Governments run jail-like facilities in what are called shelter homes for trafficked women. Besides lack of freedom of movement in these shelters, there are allegations that staff and police sell some women unclaimed by their families to men on the pretext of marriage.
Some child trafficking victims receive shelter or other protective services through broad child protection programmes and centres, offered by provincial governments, albeit there is no information on how many victims were assisted. Civil society groups report that government rescues of trafficking victims are not accompanied by efforts to protect them, leading to the victims’ re-trafficking. The Punjab provincial government continues implementation of its project launched in 2008 to eliminate bonded labour in brick kilns that includes helping an unknown number of bonded labourers obtain identity cards and interest-free loans. There is no information on how many trafficking victims were assisted by this programme.
The FIA has reportedly placed anti-trafficking posters at airports and border crossings to raise awareness of trans-national trafficking. Many of the district vigilance committees charged with curbing bonded labour and mandated by law continue to be either inactive or ineffectual. Under the government’s devolution process, which started in 2010, labour regulation and other civil matters, as well as social service delivery, were devolved from the central government to provincial jurisdictions that often did not have the financial resources and technical capacity to carry them out. This hampers the government’s overall efforts to effectively address forced labour and to provide protective services to trafficking victims.
The government’s efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts by arresting some clients of prostitution are vitiated by the government’s punishing of females in prostitution without ensuring that they are not victims of trafficking. Pakistan is not a signatory to the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children.
The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at [email protected]