IOM developing strategy to counter human trafficking

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) held a one-day seminar in the northwestern city of Peshawar this week, as part of a series of meetings across the country to help develop a national strategy to combat human trafficking. "It is to raise awareness about the phenomenon of trafficking. Pakistan has different aspects of the issue - specific to different areas - this is why we need to receive input from stakeholders from all over the country to formulate a national counter-trafficking mechanism," Richard Dazinger, regional representative of the IOM office for West and Central Asia, told IRIN in Peshawar, capital of Northwestern Frontier Province (NWFP). The seminars are being organised in the federal and provincial capitals under IOM's ongoing project, entitled: "Development of a Conceptual Framework and Strategies to Combat Traficking." The two-year programme, comprising stakeholders from the governmental, intergovernmental and nongovernmental sectors, is funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Trafficking is largely the work of organised crime networks, often conducted by the same people involved in the smuggling of drugs and weapons, Dazinger told delegates. "And therefore, we are looking at two issues, - basic rights of human beings, of women and children, and then there are security issues as well," he said. Dazinger also noted that there were different categories of vulnerable groups and that preventive measures to combat trafficking should not focus on just one vulnerable group. Pakistan is a country of source, transit and transmission of women and children trafficked for sexual exploitation and bonded labour. While there are no exact figures regarding the trafficked people, the issue remains a source of concern for both governmental and nongovernmental bodies. "Nepalese, Bangladeshi, Burmese and Afghan women are brought into Pakistan through different borders and then trafficked to Gulf and other states," Rakhshanda Naz, resident director of women’s rights organisation Aurat Foundation, told IRIN. Internal trafficking is also affecting Pakistan. Human rights activists said that the state agencies consider custom and tradition - at the root of much internal trafficking - as internal matters of families and generally do not intervene. But the women are being sold as commodities under customary practices, say the rights activists. The government has taken several legislative and administrative measures recently to deal with the problem. In 2002, the federal government introduced the Human Trafficking Law, proposing imprisonment for human traffickers and compensation to victims. "Under the law, 649 cases of trafficking have been registered so far and 521 people have been arrested. While 257 cases out of the 649 have been sent to court, there have been 22 convictions," Fida Hussain Afridi, provincial additional secretary, home and tribal affairs department of northwestern Frontier province (NWFP), told in the seminar. Afridi called on developed countries to look into the issue on humanitarian grounds and help to work out a way to facilitate the “economic migrants”. "Several young people [take] the services of traffickers in search of better employment, the developed world should try to help such people, who are sometimes deprived of their fundamental human rights, left in jails [to] face miserable conditions." Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs) and machine-readable passports have been introduced recently to check the menace of human smuggling and trafficking. Moreover, a Personal Identification Secure Comparison and Evaluation System (PISCES) has also been put in place at nine ports in the country to prevent document fraud and to prepare a database of people coming in and out. IOM is running several other counter-trafficking projects in Pakistan, including the training of law enforcement agencies and the establishment of a model shelter for the protection of victims of trafficking. The migration agency has also conducted a national survey to assess the human trafficking situation, which will be released in January next year.