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An official US report on human trafficking places Pakistan, Afghanistan and India among the countries where men, women and children are subjected to forced labour and sex-trafficking.
The report, released on Friday, identifies all three as source, destination, and transit countries for human trafficking.
The report is considered the benchmark index for global anti-trafficking efforts, as it ranks 188 nations according to their willingness and efforts to combat trafficking and slavery.
The 2014 study relegates Thailand to the lowest rank because of the way it treats workers.
Qatar was demoted to one rung above, and will join Thailand if it doesn’t improve its record in the coming years.
In both countries, workers die because of the way they are treated.
In Pakistan, the deteriorating security situation and weak economy are identified as the main causes for trafficking.
The report points out that counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency efforts monopolises the Pakistani government’s resources and attention.
The country’s largest human trafficking problem is bonded labour, in which landowners, traffickers or recruiters exploit an initial debt to entrap entire families and sometimes this bondage persists for generations.
Experts estimate that two to four million people are subjected to bonded labour in Pakistan at any given time.
Bonded labour is concentrated in Sindh and Punjab, but also takes places in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
In some cases, when bonded labourers attempt to escape or seek legal redress, police return them to their traffickers, who then hold labourers and their families in private jails.
Dawn
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