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Pakistan fears human traffickers in quake zone

Posted on: Monday, 21 November 2005, 09:23 CST

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Aid agencies and the Pakistan government are working together to warn survivors of last month's deadly earthquake against falling prey to human traffickers, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Monday.

The quake, which killed more than 73,000 people and left 2.5 million homeless, has raised fears that gangs, already active in Pakistan, will move into quake-devastated areas and dupe families into letting them take women and children.

"Very often we see traffickers taking advantage of people's desperate situation, moving into a situation where families can be persuaded or compelled to part with their children," Brunson McKinley, head of the Geneva-based IOM, told a news conference in Islamabad.

"We have noticed in other emergencies, including also the (Asian) tsunami, there's a kind of new opportunity for traffickers."

Traffickers offer to take a child or a woman away with them to another place and give them a job, so they can earn money and send it back home to their families. Instead, they often end up sold into child labor or prostitution. Some are just kidnapped.

The IOM, which plays a leading role globally against human trafficking, is working with the government to alert survivors to the danger of traffickers with an information campaign that will go into the many tent villages scattered around the quake zone.

McKinley said this was a preventive measure as he had not yet heard of any cases where traffickers had succeeded in luring away quake survivors.

Pakistan has set up refuges for orphans and widows to keep them out of the clutches of traffickers. It has also frozen adoptions of Pakistanis, McKinley said.

"When the door is open for adoption of orphans, it's another avenue of approach to this problem by unscrupulous businessmen, gangs and traffickers," he added.

Source: REUTERS

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