The biggest hubs of human
trafficking — that is, the abominable business of transporting people illegally
across borders. What is worrying though is the revelation that those willing to
take up the arduous task of crossing many international frontiers in order to
land somewhere in Europe include even minors and teenagers.
Coming on the heels of an international campaign that effectively ended the
smuggling of Pakistani children to the Gulf states as camel jockeys, this trend
shows that traffickers are successfully marketing European destinations to lure
parents to send their children to these faraway places in search for quick and
extra bucks.
At the same time it also confirms how vulnerable Pakistan is on this count. With
a very young population — about 50 per cent of all people living in Pakistan are
aged between 15 and 24 years — our country hardly affords facilities and
opportunities to accommodate all of them within its own borders. That leaves a
lot of room for desperate measures like sending our younger generation abroad,
by any means possible, or leaving them at the mercy of the forces of anarchy and
destruction. The fact that so many of Pakistani children are becoming the foot
soldiers of international jihadi forces — as fighters as well as suicide bombers
— testifies to our failure to channelize their youthful exuberance for positive
gains rather than allow their trafficking to other parts of the world.
The government of late has taken a lot of laudable steps, yet it will take a
comprehensive strategy involving social, economic, educational and cultural
measures to bring it to a complete halt. The only other option is to let people
drift — a sure recipe for disaster if the people involved make up the bulk of
the population and on them depends the future of the country.