PESHAWAR, Sept 2: Lawyers attending a training workshop on Sunday called upon the authorities to clearly define ‘internal trafficking’ and to amend the law aimed at curbing the menace of human trafficking.

The lawyers said the introduction of the Prevention and Control of Human Trafficking Ordinance, 2002, was a positive step, but the law had various lacunas.

They said that ‘internal trafficking’ had not been defined properly in the law and there were many ambiguities about the term.

Lawyers from different districts of the province were putting forward their recommendations on the closing day of a four-day training programme on human trafficking organised for lawyers by the Community Appraisal and Motivation Programme (Camp) in collaboration with Qazi Jamil Institute of Legal Studies.

The participants of the training programme were of the view that punishments mentioned in the ordinance for different types of trafficking should be enhanced to be an effective deterrent against such crimes.

They said that at present the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had been assigned the task of investigation under the ordinace, adding that it alone could not check such offences across the country. They said that other law-enforcement agencies should also be empowered to deal with such cases.

“There are various stakeholders in this issue and it is the need of the hour to train all of them to effectively check all forms of human trafficking,” said former attorney general of Pakistan, Qazi Muhammad Jamil.

He said the ordinance in itself was good and some deficiencies pointed out by the lawyers would help the legislature to make it more effective. Mr Jamil regretted that sometimes the victims of human trafficking were treated like offenders.

“The law-enforcement agencies should be properly trained so that they could differentiate between a victim and an offender under the law,” he said.

Trafficking could not be confined only to a few acts and there should be a broader definition of this crime as various other acts such as giving a girl to a rival party or a man for settling disputes and forced marriages by selling women should also be declared one of the many forms human trafficking.

The chief executive of CAMP, Naveed Shinwari, said that their target group for the training included civil society organisations, provincial police department, lawyers’ community, media and judiciary. He said that their prime objective was to increase inter-institutional cooperation for effective counter-trafficking strategy and measures on the provincial level.

The deputy attorney-general, Mr Salahuddin Khan, said that sentences given in the ordinance should be enhanced.

He said there was need to properly educate the personnel of the FIA, the prime agency for checking human trafficking, adding that investigation mechanism should also be improved to help conviction of traffickers.

Muhammad Ameen of International Organisation of Migrants (IOM) said that according to the annual report on trafficking in persons 2005 of the US State Department, Pakistan was a source, transit, and destination country for victims of severe forms of trafficking in persons.

“The government of Pakistan did not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, the 2002 ordinance is an effort to make significant change in that direction,” he said.

Mr Ameen shared a survey conducted by the IOM in

2005 with participants of the programme about problems faced by victims of trafficking, stating that the victims did not seek the help only to escape the circumstances of any such move.

He said that conditions of shelter homes across the country, where women victims were kept, should be improved.