August 30, 2006	Wednesday	Sha'aban 5, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Aug 29: The draft of migration management policy is ready and will be presented to the cabinet for approval soon. This was stated by secretary interior Syed Kamal Shah while speaking at an inter-ministerial preparatory conference for the UN high-level dialogue on international migration and development here on Tuesday.

The conference was organised by International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

Mr Shah said the ministry of interior had also formulated a national action programme against human trafficking under which a number of interventions had been made for prevention of human trafficking, prosecution of traffickers and protection of the victims.

He said the ministry had initiated a number of policy interventions against human trafficking and smuggling. He said both legislative as well as administrative measures had been taken in this regard.

He pointed out that the latest important intervention was the establishment of a migration management cell in the ministry of interior which would coordinate efforts, conduct research, and collect, disseminate and analyse data for generating policy parameters for migration management.

He said the ministry was also proactively involved in various bilateral, multilateral, regional and international arrangements for this purpose.

He said migration was considered one of the defining global issues of the early twenty-first century, as more and more people were on the move today than at any other point in human history.

According to an estimate, there are about 192 million people living outside their place of birth. This means that roughly one of every thirty-five persons in the world is a migrant.

He stressed that a comprehensive approach to international migration management was required to deal with the issue.

He said the location of Pakistan between South Asia and the Middle East with porous borders had made it a fertile ground for human smugglers as well as traffickers but the government took on the challenge to address the problem of irregular migration.