Women trafficking in Pakistan is the manifestation of poverty, agreed the speakers of the seminar Women Trafficking – causes, remedies, and the role of media, held in Karachi on Tuesday, May 26, 2009. The other main cause of women trafficking in Pakistan was said to be illiteracy.

The seminar was arranged by the Aurat Foundation with Tauqeer Fatima Bhutto, Sindh Minister for Women Development, as the chief guest. While hailing the role of media in highlighting the issue of women trafficking, Ms. Bhutto condemned the practice/crime of women trafficking, attributing it to the root causes of poverty and also to illiteracy. These two factors often result in poor attention to girls at home and to stifling restrictions, all which force young girls, many of them minors, to leave home and end up in wrong hands.

Girls who run away from their homes and are trapped by traffickers are often sent abroad under fake or forced marriages. The situation is particularly serious in Sindh province where 25 cases of women trafficking were registered last year. However, many more such cases, happening throughout the country, go unreported due to the stigma associated with women’s escape from home and ‘losing honor’.

Recently, a case of a minor girl from Peshawar being sold for 2 million rupees to an Arab in Dubai was reported in the newspapers. The girl was recovered from the custody of traffickers on Peshawar Airport and a family member of the girl was also arrested as accomplice in the crime. Many poor people in the country also sell their daughters into marriages due to poverty, often with bitter consequences for the girls being sold.