Organized Crime and Human Trafficking increases in Pakistan

By Mishal Zia 

Dateline: 22nd of July, 2020

In 2022, human trafficking and migrant smuggling in Pakistan became a crisis shaped by both despair and institutional shortcomings. Across the year, thousands of Pakistanis, driven by stagnant wages, unemployment, and the hope of a better life abroad, became entangled in opaque networks promising passage to Europe, the Gulf, or other destinations. These journeys often required enormous fees and carried extreme risks.

In March 2022, Islamabad hosted a high-level conference convened by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Federal Investigation Agency, alongside international partners, to discuss trafficking in persons and the smuggling of migrants. The gathering brought together diplomats, law enforcement officials, and civil society representatives to discuss legal frameworks, the need for inter-agency coordination, and prevention strategies. For some observers, however, the conference underscored how far official words still outpaced action on the ground.

That disconnect became starkly visible in the numbers reported by Pakistani authorities in the months that followed. By mid-2022, the Federal Investigation Agency disclosed that approximately 19,000 Pakistanis had been stopped at departure points or off-loaded from flights on suspicion of illegal emigration. While a handful of human traffickers were arrested and placed under investigation, critics argued that these enforcement statistics masked the deeper problem. The sheer scale of irregular migration and the persistent lure of perilous sea and land routes to Europe and the Gulf indicated that the networks remained largely unbroken.

The human cost of these journeys was tragically confirmed later in the year. In the Mediterranean, an overcrowded migrant vessel sank off the Greek coast with hundreds of people aboard, many of them Pakistani nationals. Hundreds were presumed dead and only a few survived. The disaster highlighted the fatal risks people were willing to take and exposed the ruthless calculus of smuggling networks that treat human lives as commodities.

These networks operate across uneven legal terrain. Pakistan’s Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Act of 2018 and the Prevention of Smuggling of Migrants Act of 2018 provide the Federal Investigation Agency with tools to pursue traffickers and smugglers. By 2022, there were dedicated FIA units working on these crimes, but enforcement was uneven. Limited resources, fragmented jurisdiction, and the immense profits at stake for organized crime hindered the effectiveness of law enforcement.

Human rights groups also highlighted forms of internal trafficking and exploitation that escaped international attention. Forced labor, bonded work, and sexual exploitation of vulnerable women and children persisted, showing that trafficking is not only about cross-border movement but also about exploitation within Pakistan. In cities and towns across the country, recruitment agents advertised opportunities abroad that never materialized. Many migrants who paid for jobs, visas, or passage found themselves stranded, defrauded, or forced onto dangerous routes through Libya, Turkey, and Greece with little hope of safe arrival or return. The high cost of these journeys, often equivalent to years of family income, revealed both the desperation of migrants and the enormous financial incentives for smugglers.

By mid-2022, when awareness campaigns and promises of greater inter-agency cooperation were launched, the human cost of trafficking was already visible in the growing number of stranded or deceased migrants. Families across Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Sindh endured the loss of sons and daughters, while communities grappled with the social and economic fallout. The year ended with an uneasy sense that existing laws and enforcement mechanisms had yet to match the scale of the challenge. Unless Pakistan addressed both the socio-economic drivers of migration and the institutional gaps in its response, human trafficking and smuggling would continue to exact a heavy toll.