News
Monday, December 02, 2013
More than 2m Pakistanis under ‘modern slavery’By Ahtesham Azhar
KARACHI: It is estimated that out of 180 million Pakistanis, more than 2 million of them are a part of modern slavery, and according to the Global Slavery Index (GSI) report, Pakistan stands on the third position.
As per the Asian Human Rights Commission, modern forms of slavery are a social, economic and cultural plague upon millions of people who are denied of their freedom and dignity. They are bound by hereditary debts, affected by poverty and unemployment and defrauded by false recruitment or forced abduction, which leads to human trafficking.
The justifications including "customary laws", gender and caste-based discrimination, as well as the variety of deceptive means by which people become enslaved are numerous. However, they all share the same illegal purpose of increasing unethical and criminal profits.
Modern slavery, in fact, needs to be understood as a crime, which flourishes not only in circumstances such as institutionalised poverty, culturally tolerated discrimination, economic stagnation and environmental degradation, but it is also due to the extreme abuse of power, corruption, the poor rule of law, the absence of regulations and weak monitoring of the labour market. The reality of modern slavery, therefore, entails serious legal implications and it is strictly connected to the national level of democracy and the implementation of law.
The GSI report points out that children subjected to forced labour at primary industries (brick kilns especially), manufacturing, commercial sexual exploitation, forced begging and domestic servitude are reported as the areas in which slavery in Pakistan concentrates the most. Bounded labour is defined as the greatest problem in the country, particularly in the Sindh and Punjab provinces.
The combination of poverty and illiteracy affects a great deal of children (who are also sexually abused in an extensive manner), together with vulnerable Afghan refugees and other "low-caste" labourers. Many adult Pakistani men and women migrate voluntarily to Gulf states as well as Turkey, South Africa, Uganda, Maldives, Greece and other European countries for low-skilled employment such as domestic work, driving or construction work. Many migrants fall victim to fraudulent recruiting practices by illegal labour agents: coercion, non-payment of wages, withholding of passports and physical abuse.
Unequal gender relations, poverty, lack of education and employment opportunities, as well as the increased foreign demand by men for sexual services of girls encourage women and girl trafficking for sex trade. Women and girls are brought to Pakistan from Bangladesh and Central Asian countries for forced commercial sexual exploitation and bonded labour. Girls and women from rural areas are trafficked to country's urban centres to share the same fate, which is also come under slavery.
In most of urban areas, girls under the age of 18 are forced into marriages to settle disputes among two families or to resolve other issues, while many old, rich men also marry a teenage with paying money to their parents and guardians.
The GSI further points out that despite the ratification of several international treaties relevant to the issue of slavery, such as the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (1957) and the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (1999), Pakistan is still lacking in coordinated and adequate policies on the matter. Although slavery is prohibited by the Constitution, only some forms of modern slavery are criminalized, and yet those few regulations are poorly implemented. Poor coordination between the central government and provincial institutions contributes to worsen the quality of the monitoring and the frequency of labour inspectorates. An effective partnership between state agencies and NGOs is also lacking. Furthermore, data collection at grassroots level and national surveys are non-existent.
The current startling situation and the increasing number of people exposed to the risk of slavery have to be attributed mainly to the expansion of the informal sector within the country, together with privatisation processes. The formal sector has been shrinking and the government has lost all its control over the labour market.
The informal sector prefers to hire women and children as they represent a copious source of cheap labour and their employment allow avoiding labour laws. They are forced to work between 12 and 16 hours a day and are paid meagre amounts - hardly enough for their survival. The Government of Pakistan has failed in the supervision of the informal sector and hence is directly responsible for the continuation of slavery. Government is challenged by the compelling necessity of undertaking essential measures in order to monitor and reduce the level of all kinds of slavery, as well as punishing those responsible for its occurrence.
Pakistan’s Ranking
Rank
3
Population
179,160,111
Estimated Enslaved
(Lower Range)
2,000,000
Calculated Number
of Enslaved2,127,132
Estimate Enslaved
(Upper Range)
2,200,000
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk