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Trafficking is always characterized by elements of exploitation through fraud, coercion, and other illegal means. Over the years, human trafficking has become a complicated and profitable business dominated by organized criminal syndicates. Human Trafficking, the darkest form of irregular migration is also known as modern-day slavery. Human trafficking is a multi-dimensional issue. It is a crime that deprives people of their human rights and freedom, increases global health risks, fuels growing networks of organized crime, can sustain the level of poverty, and impede development in certain areas. The human trafficking phenomenon affects many underdeveloped countries virtually in Asia, Africa, and Europe.
The common denominator of the trafficking scenario is the use of force, fraud, or coercion to exploit a person for profit. Traffickers can subject victims to labor exploitation, sexual exploitation, or both. Trafficking for labor exploitation, the form of trafficking claiming the greatest number of victims includes traditional chattel slavery, forced labor, and debt bondage. Trafficking for sexual exploitation typically includes abuse within the commercial sex industry. In other cases, individuals exploit victims in private homes, often demanding both sex and work. In the year (2004), the UN Commission on the Status of Women highlighted the need for more action in demand education by adopting a U.S. resolution on eliminating the demand for trafficked women and girls. This was the first UN resolution focused on eliminating demand, and, importantly, it acknowledged the link between commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking.
There is a large number of reports available on human trafficking in Pakistan. Most of these reports have been undertaken in the last fifteen years and are based mainly on studies and surveys commissioned by donors. These studies focus on a range of aspects linked to both internal and external trafficking, human smuggling, and illegal migration. There are no studies that focus exclusively on internal trafficking, although some studies have focused on aspects related to internal trafficking in Pakistan such as bonded labor and the culturally sanctioned practices of Wata Satta, Vani, Swara, and payment of bride price.
The Government of Pakistan does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. The government demonstrated significant efforts during the reporting period by increasing investigations, prosecutions, and convictions of sex trafficking. The government amended its national strategic framework against trafficking in persons and human smuggling to extend it through 2020 and ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child Optional Protocol on Armed Conflict. The province of Sindh adopted a law prohibiting bonded labor and both the Sindh and Punjab provincial governments passed legislation criminalizing child sex trafficking and forced labor with sufficiently stringent sentences. In November 2016, the province of Baluchistan passed legislation establishing District Child Protection Units, charged with providing case management and ensuring abused children including trafficking victims, receive appropriate government services. The province of Punjab opened its first wholly-integrated women's shelter for victims of violence and Sindh increased its budget for women's shelters. The government did not demonstrate increasing efforts compared to the previous reporting period. Overall, government law enforcement efforts on labor trafficking remained inadequate. Despite bonded labor being Pakistan's largest trafficking problem, only the government of Punjab reported convictions for bonded labor and the total number was low 10 convictions in 2016 compared with seven in 2015.
Official complicity in trafficking crimes remained a serious problem, yet the government reported no prosecutions or convictions of complicit officials. Government protection efforts were weak. Provincial governments' identification of victims decreased sharply and only a small number of the total victims identified were referred to rehabilitation services, which remained inadequate and inconsistent. Because the government has devoted sufficient resources to a written plan that, if implemented, would constitute significant efforts to meet the minimum standards, Pakistan was granted a waiver per the Trafficking Victims Protection Act from an otherwise required downgrade to Tier 3. Therefore, Pakistan remained on the Tier 2 Watch List for the fourth consecutive year. (Trafficking in Persons Report - Pakistan 2017)
T Khan, M.S. et al., (2013) conducted a study under the topic “Poverty of Opportunity Forcing Women into Prostitution, A Qualitative Study in Pakistan” explored that limited opportunities, poverty, financial burdens, the desire to survive, lacking adequate knowledge, and the desire for more material assets have made girls and married women, in Lahore, enter into a web of selling sex.
Furthermore, field research shows the great harm suffered by people used in prostitution: Though all victims were subjected to trafficking, 57.1% of commercial sexual workers (CSW) were working involuntarily against their consciousness and 42.9% CSWs were, apparently, acting as such because of their helplessness – extreme poverty, unemployment, lack of other alternative, etc. 100 percent of people being used in prostitution want to escape but were bonded by debt.
Numerous interventions would be required at three levels: the prevention of trafficking, the protection of victims, and the prosecution of the traffickers. From a holistic perspective of care, a health professional can play a pivotal role by providing preventive awareness. Besides, educational programs need to be in place in order to protect women from severe health consequences. (Shaneela 2012).
Studies undertaken by the International Organization for Migration have generally focused on external trafficking. One of the earliest studies it commissioned on Pakistan was the 'Trafficking in Persons in Pakistan' study implemented by RAASTA Development Consultants. This study attempted to provide a national overview of human trafficking in Pakistan. The IOM study conducted in 2005 collected data on 201 trafficking victims out of which 124 were women and 77 were children. The study identifies some key characteristics of trafficking victims and concluded that most women and children were trafficked both across borders and internally.
The IOM, in 2005, published Pakistan Thematic Group's Position Paper on Trafficking which attempts to develop a conceptual framework and strategies to combat trafficking with funds from the Canadian International Development Agency. This forum facilitated members in studying, debating, and reaching a consensus on pertinent issues regarding the nature, causes, and consequences of the phenomenon, to identify viable solutions for tackling it. However, it does not provide any new information on the magnitude or trends of internal trafficking.
A study that focuses exclusively on girls is a study by the Noor Education Trust (2008) titled Brides for Sale. While this study documents the practice in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of marrying off young girls for money by poor parents, the case studies provided do not always capture the issue of trafficking and show the blurred lines between various cultural practices and internal trafficking.
In January 2004, Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) initiated an ILO-funded Child Trafficking Project covering the whole of Pakistan to gain a better understanding of the nature and magnitude of Child Trafficking for different exploitive purposes like child labor and sexual exploitation. Swat was considered as the center of this business in KP and the survey conducted found that the basic causes of child trafficking were extreme poverty in case of girl child trafficking. This was due to illiteracy in the lowest socio-economic strata of the population. Other causes were unemployment, lack of sex and health education, large family size, anarchic judicial system, etc. The age of the victim averaged 11 and above, and she was married to allow passage outside Swat. Girls from within Pakistan are also working in brothels around the country. Pimps will pick up destitute or runaway girls and women from the streets and persuade or force them into the profession. Other victims are sold into the business by their own family members or even kidnapped from their own homes. Auctions of girls have been reported in small towns, where they fetch Rs.30-40,000 for their “owners.” (HRCP 1996)
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has documented numerous reported incidents of the kidnapping and sale of women within Pakistan, as well as the trafficking of Afghan women in Peshawar. (HRCP 1996) Accurate figures on the proportion of trafficked women who are adolescents are impossible to obtain, but the fact that young girls are sold into prostitution and that mothers and daughters are sold separately demonstrates that the business values the young independently. Further, those who find themselves bought and sold are invariably victims of poverty and lack the support and protection of their families.
The plan of work would outline the phase-wise distribution and will consist of the following five chapters;
The study would be purely qualitative and descriptive in nature which will attempt to describe the phenomena in detail. In this regard, a qualitative and descriptive approach would be adopted towards the issues related to internal women trafficking in KP. The study will be based on primary and secondary data, the tools for this study will be developed on the basis of primary, and secondary data, desk review, and relevant stakeholders. Based on the scope of the study, and literature due to the high intensity of the issue, a few districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will be selected for data collection as a sample. The study would be carried out in the sample districts/ areas; Data will be collected from different stakeholders in phases, the idea there is to find civil society organizations and individuals to get information and their perspective about women trafficking in the area. In the next phase, the relevant key stakeholders/government officials will be interviewed, along with the victims of trafficking.
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