ISLAMABAD: The United States this week recognized Pakistan’s efforts against human trafficking, removing the country from its trafficking watchlist and revising Pakistan’s classification to ‘Tier 2’ in the State Department’s ‘Trafficking in Persons (TIP)’ 2022 report.
Tier 2 includes countries whose governments do not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but are making significant efforts to do so. The report said Pakistan had improved its anti-trafficking performance over the reporting period.
“The government demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared with the previous reporting period, considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, if any, on its anti-trafficking capacity; therefore Pakistan was upgraded to Tier 2,” the report said.
It also recognized achievements by the Pakistani government and its various provincial departments, saying they had increased the implementation of standard operating procedures (SOPs) on victim identification and referral and trained more stakeholders.
“The government allocated resources for the implementation of the National Action Plan (NAP) and amended the Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Act (PTPA) to remove provisions that allowed fines in lieu of imprisonment for sex trafficking crimes with women and children as victims,” the report said.
However, the report said the government had failed to meet the minimum standards in “several key areas,” calling on Pakistan to increase prosecutions and convictions of all forms of trafficking, including bonded labor and sentence perpetrators to significant prison terms.
