Conventionally, the Third World has been labelled as perpetuating the inhumane concept of human trafficking. However, contrary to this misconception, working children and trafficked women are a global phenomenon and have long been viewed as cheap resources that are exploited by several developed countries as well.

Human trafficking is the second most lucrative source of organised crime revenue in the world after the arms and drugs trade. Pakistan in particular has been described as “one of the key sources of women trafficking” in the world.

In Pakistan this issue is multi-dimensional (consisting of both bonded labour and sex trafficking) and stems from the fact that Pakistan is an origin, transit and destination country.

The source countries from where Pakistan receives trafficked individuals include but are not limited to Bangladesh, Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Myanmar and Central Asia.
Women being trafficked from the Middle East and Bangladesh transit through Pakistan before reaching their final destinations. Women and children are also trafficked from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia, India and sometimes onwards to Eastern Europe as well.

Additionally, young boys have been trafficked from Pakistan to the United Arab Emirates to work as camel jockeys. Children as young as four and five have been uprooted from their families and sent to nurture the camels and participate in the races, often leading to serious injuries and death.

The key logic underlying trafficking is the profitability and the transactionalist nature of the business: it is a lucrative industry that has become a convenient method of trading and earning money, based on the rules of demand and supply.

The economics of market exchange can be applied to this field: there is a considerably high demand for trafficked individuals both internally and by host countries.
Therefore those who wish to become agents/traffickers are presented with a profitable market at a relatively non-hassle cost.

Moreover, individuals can be ‘sold’ more than once, unlike the drugs or arms trade, which makes the trade more profitable. However in Pakistan the market for
trafficking is not restricted to mere profit and loss: this means that notions of personhood, shame (izzat) and honour are closely intertwined with sex and labour trafficking.

Ironically, the red light areas of Pakistan, specifically the Shahi Mohalla of Lahore, the bazar-i-husn of Multan, and those of Rahim Yar Khan, Kasur, Layyah and Hyderabad are administered through stringent regulations and are the hub of ‘gundaism’. To cite a case in point, the legacy of the ‘red-light’ district of Lahore originates from the ‘dancing girl’ culture prevalent amongst the courtesans of the Mughal era. However, Louise Brown’s intermittent seven-year research in the red light area of Lahore documented in her book, Sex Slaves: The Trafficking of Women in Asia shows how this cultural tradition has in fact transformed into a chiefly commercial trade today.

The clients now are usually wealthy, often educated upper class men, and the cultural elements of the dance have been far removed. According to one of Brown’s informants during her fieldwork in Heera Mandi, “It was good in those days, but all that has changed; nobody bothers with singing and dancing anymore. We were trained for years, but today nobody does that.”

In another instance, Parveen, a 20-year-old woman, was a victim of sex trafficking. As a 14-year-old Pakhtun girl, Parveen was living in northwest Pakistan when one day while she was walking to school she was hit on the head.

According to her, the next time she woke up she found herself imprisoned in a brothel in the town of Khanpur. “I didn’t know what had happened to me or where I was,” she said. “Then, when the drugs wore off, they told me I was to be a prostitute.”

There is no single group to be blamed for human trafficking; however in Pakistan’s particular case one major factor exacerbating trafficking is that the official authorities and legislation/ courts are often negligent if not complicit in cases of human trafficking.

As a consequence, trafficking agents are not deterred by fear of accountability. Moreover, at present the structure of Pakistani society is such that it reinforces the hegemonic patriarchal system, within which women and children have limited operational capacity. Due to the fact that this system serves social functions, the comprador elite responsible for policymaking do not place a high priority on trafficking. The role of the government has to be clearer on the issue of trafficking. Internal laws should be introduced within Pakistan by emulating international trafficking laws.

Civil society including the media and human rights groups should make an added effort to ensure widespread awareness of this issue, as the majority of trafficking victims remain oblivious to their subjugation.

The most challenging element is tackling the taboo associated with trafficking, especially sex trafficking; as a result of this social stigma women are often fearful of allowing their experiences of victimisation and torture to surface in the wider society and cases are underreported.

Moreover, victims of trafficking should be provided with proper legal and financial aid as well as social welfare. In short, transformation will have to be led from the front and the top — otherwise as Audrey Lorde put it, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never allow us to bring about genuine change”.

The writer is an anthropologist from the University of Oxford.

It is the 21st century and Pakistan still reports numerous cases of honour killing annually despite the phenomenon of underreporting. Honour-killing is defined as “gender-based violence … the homicide of a member of a family or social group by other members, due to the belief the victim has brought dishonour upon the family or community”.

Karo-kari falls under the same ambit, literally translating into ‘black male’ (karo) and ‘black female’ (kari). After labelling a ‘dishonourable’ woman ‘kari’, the family aims to restore its honour by killing both the ‘karo’ and ‘kari.’

The concept of women being viewed as property has long existed and the birth of the girl child in many societies continues to be viewed as a blow to the family’s so-called pride. In some societies a man is hit with a shoe seven times if a daughter is born. Interestingly, in many instances the socially constructed concept of ‘honour’ is deployed euphemistically in order to veil the real motive at hand, such as a property feud, inheritance struggle or, in the case of a man, remarriage.

The fire of gender-based violence in Pakistan was further fuelled by the introduction of Zia’s much-debated Hudood Ordinance, which Musharraf later replaced with the Women’s Protection Bill of 2006.

However, the continued lack of attention by public-sector and law-enforcement agencies alike towards demanding accountability of those who commit honour killings has played a big role in perpetuating such incidents, which are at odds with the modern era we inhabit. Human rights and women’s protection has never been a sustained priority for the government. I guess we parted ways with Napoleon’s call to the importance of mothers and women eons ago.

However, not all is lost — select filmmakers and writers have been courageous enough to begin touching upon topics of social importance in Pakistan. At least we are learning to begin the dialogue and to me, that is undoubtedly a silver lining.

Then there are stories of courageous individuals like Khalida Brohi who hails from Balochistan. Despite the oppressive social norms she had to contend with, Khalida was determined to make a difference to people’s lives. In 2004 she joined hands with a group of young people who laid the foundation for Participatory Development Initiatives (PDI) in Khuzdar, Balochistan. The key aim of PDI was to promote participatory and sustainable development, whilst protecting the ecosystem and striking a gender balance — in other words, an equal opportunities endeavour.

Khalida had the foresight to pre-empt the fact that the success of her efforts hinged severely on maximum community participation as well as on the philosophy that financial empowerment would become an enabler for social inclusion.

As a result her initiatives involved interactive entrepreneurial programmes, including cricket tournaments, peer to peer education programmes and public theatre events which had a two-fold aim — creating awareness around issues of significance and promoting critical dialogue amongst decision makers, including tribal leaders. Transformation to Khalida meant direct involvement at the village level rather than just overarching conversation — this resulted in the creation of sustainable Sughar resource centres in a number of tribal areas of Balochistan.

In 2008 Khalida and her programme partners successfully launched a campaign with the aim of reducing the number of honour killing cases and tackling the tribal customs associated with the existence of the jirga system. Khalida’s success culminated in a 400-person march to challenge honour killing and gender-based violence in Pakistan.

On the flip side, what is interesting is that unlike most other efforts, PDI also remains neutral enough to include efforts to preserve and protect the more productive and value-additional nuances of Balochi tribal traditions via skill development and capacity-building programmes, as opposed to a cookie cutter, one-size-fits-all strategy. Such courageous endeavours must be recognised and applauded: Khalida’s agenda and terrain are very challenging, yet her success rate is truly inspirational.

Finally, the prevalence of such traditions in Pakistan can’t help but point towards Warren Buffet’s concept of the inner versus outer scorecard. The inner scorecard is an individual’s own criteria by which one judges him or herself. In contrast, the outer scorecard is the “picture of self-worth predicated upon the judgments of others”. The parallel thus drawn is that between “intrinsic value” vis-à-vis “market-value”. The latter is obviously a subtle form of ego.

As Buffet says, “If the world couldn’t see your results, would you rather be thought of as the world’s greatest investor but in reality have the world’s worst record? Or be thought of as the world’s worst investor when you were actually the best?”

The existence of gender-based violence including karo-kari is a reiteration of the reality that the quest for external reassurance continues in humans unabated. Women must abide by socially restrictive practices to ensure that no damage is done to the family’s honour and thus safeguard the reputation of men. Social approval and outer scorecard at play yet again. Who thinks what and of whom? Alas, they are the superior sex indeed!

The writer is an anthropologist from the University of Oxford.

In Pakistan, amongst other quarters, governments, academics and the private sector have for a long time debated the marginalised and hence unequal status of women. As Martin Luther King, Jr, said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.” Whether or not the US has achieved that exalted status remains a moot point. However, the ambition of the so-called ‘weaker sex’ seems to follow a similar trajectory.

Interestingly, though, Pakistan is for once not a solo runner; harassment at the workplace is a growing concern for several countries across the globe, including the UK and India. As a result, there is enhanced focus on equal opportunity, meritocracy, diversity, respect and the appreciation of differences at the workplace.

In such a context, has the Protection against Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2010, been effective in Pakistan? That begs the question: how many professional women are even aware that such a law exists and what its tenets mean to them from a career standpoint?

A law such as this is yet another feather in the cap of decision-makers aiming to showcase the efforts being made to reduce the gender gap in the country. Whilst many organisations may have informed their employees of the existence of such an avenue of legal recourse for women, others may have dismissed its formulation by simply restricting communication. Beyond that, the wording of the tenets is vague. If, in certain cases, an incident of harassment does get reported, its practical resolution via legal recourse is considerably unlikely as is a concrete outcome.

In addition to this law, however, some corporations and in particular multinationals also have stringent global policies and ethical standards to comply with as part of their employee code of conduct, including the threat of disciplinary action being taken to deal with cases of harassment. However, here is where the cleavage between reality and praxis plays a pivotal role: in practical terms, how many women would actually report an incident of harassment?

The fear of being blamed or becoming a victim of ensuing discrimination often overshadows the reporting process. In cases where the accused is one’s own boss, the predicament worsens manifold. In many situations, if even reported, the case is derisively dismissed by both male and female employees at the workplace. Some organisations may even go to the extent of concluding that the woman might have been a ‘willing accomplice’ for the matter to have arisen in the first place.

Examples of such instances are rampant in the country. There are banks that in practice exclude women from competing for equal opportunity by ensuring that their senior management teams are constituted solely of men. In this way, women are excluded from the decision-making process. In the case of Islamic banks, this is yet another demonstration of religion being employed euphemistically to justify a fundamentally discriminatory stance.

Further, there are public- and private-sector organisations that exhibit prejudice during year-end appraisals and evaluations against working mothers and also against women who take maternity leave. Does that constitute harassment and discrimination as well?

Exacerbating the predicament is the somewhat more challenging issue of what defines harassment: subtle inferences, inappropriate jokes, remarks or gestures. What falls within the ambit of harassment is a fairly subjective aspect, which the law does not clearly indicate. In many multinational organisations and other private-sector entities as well as the medical profession, there are several instances where men, under the garb of over-friendliness, will communicate with female colleagues in ways that may well fall within the ambit of harassment, albeit subtle.

Interestingly, harassment does not constrict itself to any level of management. In fact, it exists across various levels of the organisation. In some cases, men in senior positions feel more empowered to harass their female subordinates or other colleagues without the fear of accountability. This points towards the direction of hierarchies that are present at the workplace, often creating barriers to the effectiveness of this law and to fostering an open, transparent culture of diversity and inclusion.

The law for the protection of women against harassment at the workplace may be a deterrent to some extent in Pakistan. However, the actual wording and terms of the law do not encompass any concrete measures or ramifications, resulting in its ineffectiveness. Most importantly, the law alone cannot be held responsible for improving the workplace environment for both genders.

Legal recourse has to go hand in hand with a socially transformative agenda of impacting the mindsets of both men and women. Foremost is the importance of not simply having an equal-opportunities-employer policy in place, one which clearly defines harassment, but also ensuring that employees are well aware of these policies, their tenets and the consequences of harassment at the workplace.

Also, if employees are regularly reminded of this policy, in addition to the law, and if management is successful in demonstrating its own commitment to ensuring that all employees are treated with respect and dignity, especially through setting the right precedence, the possibility of harassment may decline.

The yearning for equality of the sexes, though, always brings to mind one paradoxical notion: by aspiring to become equal to men, are we — women — ceding to them superiority?

The writer is an anthropologist from the University of Oxford.