According to a report compiled by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Pakistan has climbed to fifth place among countries with the highest number of illegal immigrants in Europe. The IOM report was released by the country’s National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) on November 14. An astounding 40% of Pakistanis wish to leave the country, says the report.
One might recall the tragedy that occurred on June 14, 2023 when a 30 metre-long fishing boat capsized and sank about 50 miles (80 km) from the southern coastal town of Pylos, killing almost 350 Pakistanis who were onboard. Everyday thousands of Pakistanis risk everything to make the unsafe journey to Europe, searching for a better life. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) asked the state to take responsibility “for its part” in the Greece boat tragedy.
A complex mix of forced and voluntary migration patterns characterise mobility to, from and within Pakistan. With a human development index of 0.562, Pakistan is at the lower end of the medium development category and positioned 150th out of the 189 countries assessed by UNDP.
According to the IOM – NCHR report, nearly 40% of Pakistanis expressed a desire to leave the country, citing economic challenges, political instability, unemployment, inflation, terrorism, and limited educational opportunities as key reasons. The report detailed that Pakistan was not among the top 10 countries for illegal migration to Europe in 2022 but surged to fifth place by mid-2023. The report revealed that by December 2023, 8,778 Pakistanis had crossed into Europe illegally. Most migrants travelled through routes involving Dubai, Egypt, and Libya. During the first half of 2023, around 13,000 Pakistanis reached Europe through these routes, with 10,000 not returning. Migration trends were higher in urban areas compared to rural ones, with 40% of urban residents and 36% of rural populations expressing a willingness to emigrate.
The highest desire to leave was recorded in Balochistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), and Gilgit-Baltistan at 42%, followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at 38%, Sindh at 37.6%, and Islamabad at 36.5%.
The report highlighted a huge spike in illegal migration in the last two years, and despite the risks associated with it, it has continued. “Illegal migration is increasing in spite of serious difficulties and danger to life on the illegal routes,” NCHR Chairperson Rabiya Javeri Agha said.
Pakistan has a sizable human smuggling market and conservative estimates place the number of Pakistanis seeking to migrate west irregularly between 300 to 400 thousand annually, with the most common method of attempting to exit Pakistan being through land routes in Balochistan.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has quoted the figure of 300,000 people leaving the country by illegal means every year. Human smuggling is an established economic endeavour, particularly in Balochistan, where smuggling has become the largest generator of revenue in some villages, and where corrupt officials reportedly participate in human smuggling operations.
Pakistani men and women voluntarily migrate overseas, particularly to the Gulf states and Europe, for low-skilled employment, where traffickers exploit some of them in labour trafficking through false job offers. Migration has increased in recent years due to the increase in population, deteriorating economy, increased poverty, inflation and unemployment, forcing the youth (60% of Pakistanis are below 30 years of age) to seek opportunities abroad, making them vulnerable to human trafficking in the process.
There have also been reports of human smuggling routes from Pakistan to the U.S. In October 2021, the U.S. government announced rewards for information leading to the arrest or financial disruption of a Pakistani-based human smuggling network, which facilitates the travel of undocumented individuals into the U.S.. In addition to planning and coordinating travel from Pakistan through dangerous routes through South and Central America, the smuggling network also offers or provides false documents for foreign nationals to use for travel.
Human smuggling routes have also been reported from Pakistan to the EU. In 2019, Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) admitted that 30 officials in connivance with the employees of national carrier PIA have been involved in a human smuggling ring that also worked in Europe. The human smuggling investigation had been carried out on a complaint by the British High Commission in 2014, as per which 20 Afghan nationals caught at Heathrow airport in London were smuggled from Benazir Bhutto International Airport Islamabad (BBIAP). The racket involved manipulating the data as the border crossing into Pakistan, tampering the CCTV footage at the airport, smuggling out through the domestic departure lounge and bypassing the immigration counter. To match the numbers of passengers travelling on the PIA flight to London the FIA officials duplicated the data of genuine passengers so that their total number in FIA data was the same as the number of boarding passes issued by the airline.
In November 2021, Spanish authorities also uncovered a smuggling ring that brought Pakistani migrants into the EU via land routes through the Balkans. During the operation, which involved police from eight countries, Croatian police intercepted a lorry transporting 77 Pakistani migrants in a space measuring just eight square metres (86 square feet), a Spanish police statement said; “Transported in life-threatening conditions in cars, vans or trucks, they often spend days confined with little or no supplies,” the European Union law enforcement agency said. Europol said each person was charged between 5,000 and 8,000 euros (USD 5,800 – USD 9,200) for the trip.
Pakistan is missing a comprehensive policy document encompassing all forms of migration and linking migration and development. Pakistan has not signed the 1949 ILO Migration for Employment Convention or the 1975 Migrant Workers Convention. Similarly, it has not signed the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees or the 1967 Protocol. Pakistan also did not sign the Palermo protocol on migrant smuggling, human trafficking and other transnational crimes.
Till 2023, 273,331 Pakistanis were deported from countries across Europe, according to the country’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). The issue of migration — whether legal or otherwise — has long existed in Pakistan. Of late, however, there has been a huge uptick in people wanting to leave for better livelihoods due to a precarious, high-inflation economy, coupled with rising unemployment, as well as a coercive and unstable political climate.
Views: 116
