Author: Zunaira Khan, MSc Social Research
The next time you buy a cheap garment, check the label.
If it says, “Made in Pakistan,” there is a real chance it passed through a supply chain tied to forced labour. The Global Slavery Index 2023 says G20 countries import billions worth of goods every year that may be produced under modern slavery. Pakistan is among the primary source countries. This is not a distant crisis, but it is in your wardrobe woven into global trade and sustained by a policing system, never designed to disrupt it.
This failure is what my research examines, and I keep returning to one uncomfortable reality; over 3.2 million people in Pakistan are living in modern slavery, yet the system acts after the harm is done.
This piece explains why this gap exists, who pays the highest price, and why fixing it is as much the responsibility of consuming nations as of Pakistan itself.
A Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight
Pakistan is a country of origin, transit, and destination for trafficked people. Men and boys are trapped in bonded labour while women are tricked by fake job offers and exploited abroad. Children cross borders without any protection. This is not just poverty at the edges of the economy but an organised crime operating within the economy, feeding directly into the global supply chains that developed nations depend on. Scholars of global political economy increasingly argue that modern slavery cannot be separated from the demands of low-cost global production systems. As Shelley (2010) argues, human trafficking is deeply embedded within licit economic structures, making it uniquely resistant to conventional enforcement responses.
Even the official numbers are scary. The UNODC Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2022 lists South Asia among the worst regions. Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) records hundreds of prosecutions annually but researchers and civil society organisations agree this only scratches the surface. Most victims are never identified. Most networks are never touched.
Why? Because the system is not designed to find most victims. There is no coordinated data collection across agencies, no real-time intelligence sharing, and no consistent training to help officers recognise trafficking networks. And it matters far beyond Pakistan’s borders. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8 commits every signatory government to provide safe and dignified work, a commitment that is impossible to honour if the exploited are invisible. To understand what it would take to fix this, we need to understand what Intelligence-Led Policing actually means.
The System That Can Actually Change Things
Intelligence-Led Policing (ILP) sounds technical, but the idea is simple: use data to predict and prevent harm before it takes place. It is the difference between a fire alarm and a fire brigade and right now, Pakistan has only the brigade, and it keeps turning up after the building has burned.
Other countries have already shown, this model works. The UK’s National Intelligence Model transformed how police deal with organised crime by making information-sharing and threat analysis, routine across all forces. Europol’s European Migrant Smuggling Centre applies the same principles specifically, to cross-border trafficking, analysing regular threat assessments that guide active operations. These are not experimental ideas but proven systems. Ratcliffe (2016) argues that Intelligence-Led Policing is most effective when intelligence is used proactively to prevent organised crime rather than simply respond to it. Pakistan has nothing equivalent, and the gap shows in the numbers. Brodeur (2010) offers a useful framework here, arguing that effective policing architectures must integrate intelligence functions at every tier rather than confining them to specialist units, a structural lesson directly applicable to Pakistan’s fragmented enforcement landscape.
On paper, Pakistan has taken important steps. The Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Act 2018 introduced penalties for trafficking offences. Pakistan has signed the UN Palermo Protocol and holds Interpol membership. These are real foundations. But strong legislation carries less weightage when the infrastructure, needed to enforce it, does not exist.
The gaps are specific and serious. Provincial police, usually first to encounter trafficking, receive no specialised training. Agencies share intelligence inconsistently and informally. And victim identification still depends overwhelmingly on self-
reporting, the method that fails most with people who are traumatised,
controlled, and in many cases do not even know they legally qualify as victims. The result is that most cases are never detected at all.
This is not just a resource problem but a systemic issue. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 calls for accountable institutions delivering justice, not ones managing a handful of prosecutions while millions go missing. Meeting that commitment requires advanced policing infrastructure, not just legislation.
Who Pays the Highest Price?
Globally, around 72% of detected trafficking victims are women and girls, according to the UNODC 2022 Report. In Pakistan, this figure reflects deeper structural inequalities. Women, especially in rural areas of KP, Sindh, and Southern Punjab, face multiple layers of disadvantage: limited education, restricted mobility, and economic dependence. These reflect the systemic issues that make women disproportionately vulnerable to trafficking in the first place.
Most anti-trafficking units are overwhelmingly male. A trafficked woman, terrified and controlled, is expected to report her experience to male officers in institutions she has every reason to distrust. So, they disappear because the system was never built to reach them. Enloe (2000) demonstrates how these conditions are not incidental but structurally produced through patriarchal and militarised social arrangements that render women systematically more vulnerable to exploitation and less visible to formal protection systems.
This means the data is incomplete, the problem is chronically understated, and policies end up responding to a distorted picture of reality. A properly designed, gender-responsive ILP framework would fix this directly; female officers in frontline roles, data disaggregated by gender in every threat assessment, and survivors meaningfully involved in shaping policy. This is what SDG 5 actually requires in practice, not just acknowledging that women are victims, but building the institutions that can reach them, provide justice and promote equality. Without these changes, the system will continue to dive deep into the menace of trafficking.
What Actually Needs to Change
The good news is that solutions already exist, and none of them require Pakistan to wait for a new government or a heavy budget. Here are four practical changes that could make a real difference.
1. Smarter border systems
Pakistan’s busiest border crossings process thousands of people daily with minimal coordination among agencies. There is an urgent need to set up a Counter-Trafficking Strategic Intelligence Unit inside the FIA, with real-time information exchange across provincial Anti-Trafficking Circles, border agencies, and customs. This is a basic coordination that would shift the patterns from reactive to anticipatory.
2. Proper training for police
Officers cannot identify trafficking if they are not trained to recognise it. The UNODC Blue Heart Campaign already provides practical identification guidelines for South Asia. Making this mandatory for every provincial officer, with annual refreshers, is one of the most cost-effective interventions available. Levi and Maguire (2004) stress that organisational reform and specialist training, not legislation alone, are the critical levers for improving police responses to organised crime. An independent audit of the Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Act (2018) can reveal the gap between law and practice.
3. Real international cooperation
International partnerships need to work in practice. This means sharing information, coordinating investigations, and focusing on real outcomes like disrupting networks. Fund a Co-Designed ILP Pilot Programme rooted in Pakistani institutional realities rather than transferring off-the-shelf Western models. None of this is achievable by Pakistan alone, and this is precisely where SDG 17 becomes concrete which focuses on strengthening global alliances for sustainable development.
4. Gender-sensitive systems
Make gender-responsive work standard, with female officers involved at every stage and data shaped by what survivors tell, alongside compulsory ILP training covering network analysis, trauma-informed interviewing, and anti-corruption protocols.
This Belongs to Developed Countries Too
It is easy for developed countries to treat this as someone else’s problem. Many Pakistani workers end up in Gulf states as trafficking victims. The kafala system, documented by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, traps workers under employer control with no legal way out. This system persists because it is profitable for the economies that run it, whose consumers benefit directly from the low costs it produces.
Closer to home, the UK’s Modern Slavery Act 2015 requires companies to audit supply chains for forced labour. In practice, compliance is weak; goods tied to forced labour in Pakistan end up on Western shelves with little scrutiny. The Global Slavery Index 2023 puts it plainly: the wealth of importing countries and the exploitation of source countries are the same system, viewed from different ends.
Addressing trafficking in Pakistan is therefore not charity. It is what the SDG commitments, that governments have signed, require in practice. We cannot commit to ending trafficking by 2030 while importing its products and human resource and calling it someone else’s problem.
The Clock Is Ticking
There are only a few years left to meet the UN goal of ending trafficking by 2030. The Global Slavery Index 2023 is explicit; no country is on track. That is not a reason to give up, it is a reason to stop confusing commitments with action.
Pakistan already has the laws and institutions. The missing aspect is how they work together and how the intelligence infrastructure turns commitments into action. ILP is not a perfect solution, and it must be implemented carefully, with proper safeguards and survivor involvement. But the current system is already failing. Awareness is the first step. Demanding accountability is the next.
Because trafficking is not invisible.
It is ignored.
And that can change.
References
Brodeur, J.P. (2010) The Policing Web. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Enloe, C. (2000) Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Europol (2023) European Migrant Smuggling Centre: Threat Assessment. The Hague: Europol.
Government of Pakistan (2018) Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Act. Islamabad: National Assembly of Pakistan.
Home Office (2015) Modern Slavery Act 2015. London: UK Government.
Human Rights Watch (2020) Migrant Workers and the Kafala System. New York: HRW.
Levi, M. and Maguire, M. (2004) ‘Reducing and preventing organised crime: An evidence-based critique’, Crime, Law and Social Change, 41(5), pp. 397–469.
Ratcliffe, J.H. (2016) Intelligence-Led Policing. 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
Shelley, L. (2010) Human trafficking: A global perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
United Nations (2000) Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons (Palermo Protocol). New York: United Nations.
United Nations (2015) Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. New York: United Nations General Assembly.
UNODC (2020) Blue Heart Campaign: Trafficking Identification Guidelines. Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
UNODC (2022) Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2022. Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Walk Free Foundation (2023) Global Slavery Index 2023. Perth: Minderoo Foundation.