ISLAMABAD: The European Union (EU) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) launched a joint project on Wednesday to combat human trafficking and migrant smuggling.

The initiative — the ‘Global Action to Prevent and Address Trafficking in Persons and the Smuggling of Migrants’ — costs 11 million euros ($12.7m) and will be implemented in partnership with the International Organisation for Migration and United Nations Children’s Fund.

The project, to be completed in 2019, is aimed at assisting selected countries in developing and implementing comprehensive national countertrafficking and countersmuggling responses. It is expected to help these countries identify trafficked victims and smuggled migrants, and thus boost the number of investigated and prosecuted cases.

The project reaffirms that combating human trafficking and migrant smuggling is of the highest importance for the EU and the UN as a whole and for the UNODC as the custodian of relevant convention of transnational organised crime which incorporates protocols of human trafficking and migrant smuggling.

In South Asia, Pakistan is the second country after Nepal where the project has been launched.

Before launching the project in Pakistan, the UNODC organised police and community awareness trainings on human trafficking and migrant smuggling in Peshawar in April, a workshop on police and community awareness in Quetta in May, and investigators and prosecutors’ training on victim identification, financial investigation and recovery of assets in Islamabad and Karachi in June.

In a related event, the UNODC launched a national awareness campaign against trafficking in persons and smuggling of migrants in collaboration with the Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection and the US Department of State.

Speaking on the occasion, UNODC Representative Cesar Guedes said the need for international community to join efforts to combat the scourge of modern day slavery, which is the human trafficking, could not be greater given the unacceptable loss of life.

Additional Director-General of the Federal Investigation Agency Dr Muhammad Shafique said that “it is crucial to have governments and civil society to work in close partnership in the fight against these crimes”.

EU Ambassador to Pakistan Jean-Francois Cautain, US Ambassador David Hale and Australia’s Acting High Commissioner Nicole Guihot also attended.

Published in Dawn, July 20th, 2017