N.G. was 16-years-old and struggling to find a job to send her two younger sisters in school and arrange treatment for her ailing mother when one of her relatives promised to finance all the expenses and forced her into sex work. Seven years later she is undergoing psychotherapy in Lahore's red light area. "My family has ostracised me. I'm now living a meaningless life," she said with tears rolling down her cheeks.
She identifies his relative as Qasim Jan. He was part of a human trafficking ring, and smuggled her to Dubai allegedly with help of government officials. "I was promised a housemaid job but Jan made me a prostitute," she said. Pakistan may join the group of some 44 countries already on the 'Tier 2 Watch List' as human trafficking is rising in the country at an alarming level - the number of most-wanted human traffickers in the country has jumped from 89 to 141 in the last four years. An official inquiry has identified 62 Federal Investigation Agency officials, from constable to additional director, involved in human trafficking.
"He managed my identity card, passport and all other relevant documents to travel to Dubai," she said, adding "Jan convinced my mother and promised to pay her 20,000 rupees per month as my salary." He has been sending 15,000 rupees per month to Gul's family. In Pakistan, a Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) is issued to citizens 18 years and above but human traffickers manage to get it for underage girls by greasing the palms of relevant officials.
N.G. said Jan would torture and starve her for days if she refused to go with a client. "I was forced to stand still for hours, naked in front of dozens of Jan's friends and clients," she recalled. Her story is not unusual. A significant number of girls and women are trafficked from Pakistan to the Gulf for sexual exploitation each year, although exact numbers are hard to find, according to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report on human trafficking released in February.
For the first time in seven years, she was allowed to visit her family back in Pakistan for three weeks in April this year. Her two sisters and mother live in Ghurki, a village on the outskirts of Lahore. "I told my mother each and everything and this made Jan my enemy," she said. He along with some other relatives forced my family to expel me from my home as "I was accused of giving a bad name to them by indulging in prostitution." Traffickers may be members of a trafficked person's family, have a close personal relationship or come from the same community. The trafficked person is more willing to trust these individuals, believing their friends or family members would not use them to make a profit or harm them, according to Global Freedom Center.
N.G. now shares a small room with five other girls in Lahore's red light area where she is being looked after by SHEED, an NGO that helps sex workers, victims of human trafficking and their children. Lubna Tayyab, founder of SHEED, stated that sex trafficking from Pakistan is impossible without government officials' connivance. "We are doing our best to rehabilitate sex workers and the victims," she said.
The SHEED has so far helped rehabilitate over 200 victims and over 700 children of sex workers to get informal education. "Her is under treatment and will soon return to normal life," she said about N.G. Forced sexual exploitation is generating around $99 billion a year for those who manage girls and women into prostitution through different means including sex trafficking, according to the International Labour Organisation report, Profits and Poverty: The Economics of Forced Labour.
Noor Alam Khan who is chairman of Voice of Prisoners, an NGO, and also pleads human trafficking cases in the Supreme Court of Pakistan said the traffickers exploit vulnerabilities and lack of opportunities to lure young girls. "Fake job offers is a common way to trap the young girls for sex trafficking," he said. Pakistan has a special law, Prevention and Control of Human Trafficking Act 2002, to deal with the crime. Under the law, the penalties range from seven to 14 years' imprisonment with a fine. Khan, however, says the same provisions have also been available in Pakistan Penal Code that weakens the case against a criminal. "Courts often release the traffickers who confuse the two separate laws because both have different interpretations," he said. He also said the FIA officials need to be sensitised and educated about the laws as they often conflate trafficking with illegal immigration.
Zohra Yusuf, chairperson of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, observed that sex trafficking is a global crime and the government should collaborate with international organisations to curb it. "The government should also launch rehabilitation programmes for the victims as their families often don't accept them," she added.
The government of Pakistan did not make progress in the protection of victims of human trafficking during the reporting period, according to US Department of State's 2013 Trafficking in Persons Report. Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Federal Interior Minister, said that 14 out of 62 FIA officials have been removed from the agency for their involvement in human trafficking while inquiries are under way against 48 others. "We are doing our best to prevent human trafficking from Pakistan and will not spare the officials found involved in the heinous crime," he said.
He said the government is also struggling to unearth and punish human smugglers. A girl who was trafficked to Dubai for prostitution six years ago from Faisalabad, is still struggling in the courts to get justice while N.G. is not ready to file a case against Jan. "How can I file a case against the culprit when my own family has shunned me," she questioned.