WASHINGTON – Pakistan may be included in the US human trafficking watchlist, which may trigger travel curbs and aid cut.
The State Department has sought tough answers from Pakistani authorities todemonstrate the country’s efforts to curb human trafficking for financialand sexual exploitation.
The US authorities may downgrade Pakistan to ‘Tier Three’ of their‘Trafficking in Persons (TIP)’ watch list in case Washington is notconvinced by the report Islamabad is supposed to submit with the StateDepartment (Monitoring Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling) by end ofthis month.
The latest development comes amid rising tension between two major war onterror allies since the US President Donald Trump announced new strategyfor the region accusing Pakistan of terror financing.
If Pakistan, which is already on ‘Tier Two’ (watch list) since 2013downgraded to ‘Tier Three’ then it would join the club of Iran, China,Syria, Russia, etc. who are among the worst offenders for human traffickingon the lowest rung of the annual TIP report.
Islamabad has already been consumed a waiver of two additional years sinceit was put on ‘Tier Two’ (watch list) in 2015.If a nation sits on the ‘Tier Two’ watch list for two years, it’sautomatically downgraded to ‘Tier Three’, unless the Department decides towaive it for a maximum of two years.