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Tackle poverty to deal with human trafficking

A number of girls in Pakistan have become victims of abuse due to fake marriages.

A few months ago Pakistani media carried news of Chinese men marrying Pakistani girls as examples of social media matchmaking. It then turned out to be a scam. Human trafficking had manifested itself in bonded labour with more than three million people enslaved within the country at brick kilns and land holdings, and smuggling of migrants to European and Middle Eastern countries, not without occasional prosecutions, until then. Yet, human smuggling showing itself up in new ways bears out that the scale of the problem requires the government to get to its root cause.
Human smuggling - a practice that does not involve coercion and is always transnational - took on an organised form in the 1980s with rings mainly based in Pakistan, Iran and Turkey. Newspaper reports quote authorities as saying that every year, between 30,000 to 40,000 Pakistanis attempt illegal passage to Europe as well as Turkey, Russia, and the Middle Eastern countries by road, sea or air. Most illegal migrants get arrested while crossing the Pakistan-Iran border, or they are nabbed inside Iran, and other transit countries. Around 200 Pakistanis have been killed during the last decade while attempting to reach by drowning, or getting shot by border security forces. In 2018, more than 80,000 Pakistanis got deported, half of them from Saudi Arabia, according to a yet-to-be-published National Commission for Human Rights (NHCR) report. For most of these chasers of dreams financial hardship is the impetus.
A new set of such people are poor girls trafficked to China - the number of whom has increased since late last year. Brokers put up advertisements in newspapers and banners in streets and clerics helped them to target hard-up parents individually or in their congregation with promises of wealth in exchange for their daughters. Brokers also targeted brick kilns and offered to pay off the workers' debts in return for their daughters as brides. Money the parents did get once. And the wedding bills were also for the grooms to foot. It was all rosy in Pakistan. But once in China, the girls found themselves helpless and vulnerable to abuse. Activists say about a thousand girls have been married off since last year. On April 26, Human Rights Watch urged China and Pakistan to take action to end bride trafficking, warning in a statement of "increasing evidence that Pakistani women and girls are at risk of sexual slavery in China".
For the last several days, Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency has been out making raids and arresting Chinese and Pakistani nationals suspected of being involved in fake marriages and human trafficking. China says it has zero tolerance for illegal transnational marriage agencies. The Chinese embassy in Islamabad said the Ministry of Public Security of China has sent a "task force to Pakistan to carry out law enforcement cooperation with the Pakistani side". The embassy said Beijing will further strengthen cooperation with the law enforcement agencies in Pakistan, effectively combat crime, so as to protect the legitimate rights and interests of the two peoples, and jointly safeguard China-Pakistan friendly relations.
In Pakistan, the laws safeguard the rights of victims of human trafficking and address the needs of smuggled migrants and stipulate a minimum imprisonment of three years and a fine of up to half a million rupees. Aggravated offences under this law, for example, when the process of smuggling endangers life and limb, or "is committed as part of the activity of an organised criminal group", will attract more punitive sanctions. The FIA has arrested 8,360 human smugglers in the last five years.
Though understaffed, the agency is training its personnel and making use of the advanced technology for prevention of human smuggling. The government of Pakistan has established an Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) to coordinate efforts of different agencies. The increased coordination between IATF member agencies has resulted in 23,098 interceptions in the last five years. A mass awareness campaign is also on with the help of NGOs, media and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the European Union.
Dismantling of the structures and networks and severe penalties to human smugglers aside, ensuring economic security for those who are vulnerable to human traffickers will be the answer. It is poverty that is mainly to blame. Only nipping this evil of human smuggling and trafficking in the bud will serve!
Waqar Mustafa is a multimedia journalist based in Pakistan