1,310 smugglers arrested from Pakistan

UNODC and FIA host regional conference on Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling

KARACHI: In the current year, as many as 1,310 smugglers have been arrested from Pakistan, out of which 23 belong to the ‘most-wanted’ category. The most widely used route of trafficking and smuggling is Pakistan to Greece via Iran and Turkey.

This was shared in a conference on ‘Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling’ at the Pearl Continental hotel on Tuesday. A collaboration between United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Pakistan office, and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), the conference brought delegates from 50 countries to discuss global trends in human trafficking and migrant smuggling.



Wajid Zia, the additional director of FIA general immigration, said that Pakistan serves as a source, transit and a destination country for migrants and traffickers due to its porous Iran and Afghanistan borders. “It serves both as a destination and transit for Afghanis, Bangladeshis and [people from] other neighbouring countries, who use it as a transit to get through to Western Europe,” he said. “However, 95 per cent of Pakistani migrants are in Middle East for work. Our deportees also hail from the Gulf States, mainly due to reasons of overstaying.”

Zia further said that Pakistan has remained a transit for traffickers and smugglers for the past four decades largely due to the situation in Afghanistan. He said that 99 per cent of the smuggling is carried out through unauthorised routes. “Complications in tracking also arise due to the deteriorating conditions in Balochistan,” he said.



According to a representative of UNODC Headquarters Vienna Data and Analysis Section, Fabrizio Sarrica, the number of deportees belonging to Pakistan has remained between 50,000 and 80,000. Sarrica presented extracts from a 2014 research on global trafficking patterns. Samples of 40,000 detected victims of trafficking from 128 countries were used for this research. The findings revealed that Greece is the first transit for Pakistani migrants while Iran and Turkey were identified as destinations. “Networks that operate as centralised hubs to Bangkok, Malaysia and Indonesia through sea also exist,” he said.

The report also said that 96 per cent of the victims of trafficking detected in South Asian region are domestic or hailing from neighbouring countries. “Eighteen per cent victims identified in Middle East and the Gulf States are from South Asia,” he said. Commenting on the changing trends in the age profiles of South Asian victims, he said 60 per cent are adults, out of which, those victimised in forced labour are greater than those who are sexually exploited, with the exception of women. He added that child assault and forced marriages are also a phenomenon growing in this particular region.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 4^th, 2015.