- Pakistan maintains its position in Tier 2 for the third consecutive time.
- The government demonstrated “greater overall effort” than before, the report said.
- 4.5 million workers trapped in “forced labor” across the country.
WASHINGTON: Pakistan maintained its second-tier position in the US State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report released on Monday.
This is the third time in a row that Pakistan has been ranked second tier by the report since 2022.
The department's report is divided into three levels.
Level 1 implies that a country is complicit in the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) and is making efforts to combat trafficking.
Meanwhile, Tier 2 includes countries that do not fully comply with the TVPA but are making “significant efforts” to achieve it.
Countries on the Tier 3 list may be subject to sanctions or restrictions on US assistance, such as non-humanitarian support, if authorized by the US president.
Pakistan shares the spot with its neighbor India on the list, as the report found that both countries “do not meet minimum standards to end human trafficking.”
However, the report highlighted that the governments of both countries are working diligently to meet these standards, hence their ranking on the list.
Additionally, the report noted that Pakistan's government has demonstrated “a greater overall effort than the previous report” with increased prosecutions and punishments for human traffickers.
Additionally, the report said that human traffickers “exploit domestic and foreign citizens in Pakistan and India.”
He highlighted “forced labor” as both countries’ “biggest human trafficking problem,” with 4.5 million workers trapped in it across Pakistan.
Human traffickers employ forced labor in kilns, agriculture, coal and carpet industries, according to the report.
