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Pakistan is cracking down on "blasphemous" content on social media, with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif urging swift punishment for those involved in "a nefarious conspiracy" against the country's Muslim majority.But critics claim the real goal is silenci...

UNITED NATIONS � The United Nations warns that conflict and poverty are fueling human trafficking and modern slavery, putting $150 billion a year into the coffers of organized crime worldwide.

Trafficking networks have gone global, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council on Wednesday during a special session on the issue. He said victims can be found in 106 countries.

Some 21 million people are estimated to be victims, used as forced labor, sex slaves, coerced into prostitution, or involuntarily recruited into armed groups. Some even have had their organs removed by traffickers to sell on the illegal transplant market.

For organized crime networks, human trafficking is a low-risk, high-reward criminal business, said Yury Fedotov, head of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime. He said low conviction rates for perpetrators let traffickers operate with near-impunity.

The conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia and elsewhere are churning out millions of desperate and vulnerable people susceptible to traffickers.

Somali human rights campaigner Ilwad Elman told the council that in her country, women and young children are trafficked for domestic work, forced prostitution and even organ removal.

Conflict and insecurity breed desperation, and traffickers present themselves as a ticket out of all of that, she said via a video link from Mogadishu.

Erosion of the rule of law enables transnational trafficking networks to act with impunity, Britain's Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner Kevin Hyland told the Security Council.

Slave trade 'booming' in Libya

Europol has confirmed that traffickers are increasingly targeting refugees in the EU, Hyland said, referring to the European Union's law enforcement agency. And nearly half of all refugees are children, many of whom are unaccompanied and, therefore, especially vulnerable.

He told of meeting a 15-year-old Eritrean girl at a refugee reception center on the Italian island of Lampedusa. She had been kidnapped and held for three months in Libya in a connection house where she was raped multiple times a day.

A modern-day slave trade is now booming in Libya, Hyland warned. Political, military and social conditions have created an environment where traffickers have thrived.

According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 70 percent of migrants moving from North Africa to Europe have experienced exploitation and human trafficking, mainly in Libya.

Terror groups, including Islamic State and Boko Haram, also engage in enslavement and forced labor, while drug traffickers use kidnapping and ransom to finance their operations.

The current refugee and migration crisis is a boon to traffickers.

As people take to the road, predators take advantage, Secretary-General Guterres said. Refugee camps have become a fertile hunting ground for traffickers to find new victims.

No borders

But trafficking can happen far from conflict zones, as well.

No country is immune from this crisis, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said. That includes the United States, where, despite our efforts to combat human trafficking, too many people are still falling victim to criminals who force them into prostitution or other types of work with no pay and no way out.

Haley noted that traffickers are using technology and the internet to their advantage in the recruiting and selling of people.

President Donald Trump's administration is committed to ending this absolutely horrific practice, she said, and is about to launch a new initiative to raise $1.5 billion to help countries break up trafficking rings and assist survivors.

The funding will come partly from the U.S. government, but unlike most assistance programs, the initiative will seek to raise most of its money from partners in foreign governments and in the private sector.

Ending modern slavery must be a collective effort, Haley said, and she pledged that the new initiative would spend its money on programs that show results.

Groups that receive funding must set measurable goals, and they must target a 50-percent reduction in modern slavery for the population they will be working with, she said.

Prevention efforts

The secretary-general made clear there is much that states can do to both punish and prevent human trafficking.

He said a solid legal framework already is in place, including the U.N. Convention Against Transnational Crime, and conventions from the International Labor Organization and the Global Plan of Action on Human Trafficking.

States also need to strengthen cooperation and coordination on law enforcement, investigations and intelligence sharing, Guterres said.

At the same time, we need to get at the underlying vulnerabilities that fuel this phenomenon, the U.N. chief added, by empowering girls through education, by respecting the rights of minorities and by establishing safe and legal channels of migration.

Source: Voice of America

ISLAMABAD � Britain will host top officials from Afghanistan and Pakistan to discuss Afghan and regional security and try to resolve Kabul's current political tensions with Islamabad.

British National Security Advisor Mark Lyall Grant, his Afghan counterpart Haneef Atmar, and Pakistani foreign policy advisor Sartaj Aziz, will lead their respective delegations Wednesday at the trilateral meeting.

Border issues

The meeting is taking place at a time when Pakistan has closed its border with landlocked Afghanistan in response to a string of deadly suicide bombings in the country last month.

Islamabad alleges anti-state militants orchestrated the violence from their hideouts on the Afghan side of the border.

Last week Islamabad opened the border for only two days to allow tens of thousands of stranded Afghans to return to their country.

Afghanistan depends on Pakistani sea ports for trade, which is considered the war-torn country's economic lifeline. The border closure has stranded thousands of containers after having left Pakistan's southern Karachi port on the Arabian Sea.

Security along border

Pakistani authorities want their Afghan counterparts to boost security on the 2,600 kilometer frontier before the traffic is restored. Islamabad has also handed over a list of 76 fugitive militants to Kabul, saying they are sheltering on Afghan soil and want their extradition.

But the Afghan government in response gave Islamabad its own list of dozens of militants and 32 training centers in Pakistan, alleging they are behind years of insurgent violence in Afghanistan.

Source: Voice of America

JOHANNESBURG �At the height of the current xenophobic violence in South Africa, new research has shown that immigrants make substantial contributions to South Africa's economy. A report released by the South African Institute of Race Relations, or IRR, shows that instead of attacking immigrants, South Africans could learn entrepreneurial skills from them.

The report, titled "South Africa's Immigrants, Building a New Economy," reveals that most immigrants have relied on their entrepreneurial skills and hard work to survive in the country. The report says the immigrants, largely from Somalia, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Pakistan, operate 80 percent of the backyard grocery shops at homes owned by South Africans.

For South African homeowners living in poor townships, these grocery shops provide a source of income from the rent the immigrants pay to run the businesses.

Other immigrants have combined their financial resources to start small businesses. Some of these have grown into large wholesale stores that are now competing with well-known establishments.

Rian Malan, author of the report and research fellow at the IRR, says that through such self-created employment, only a few foreigners compete with locals for formal jobs.

"Foreigners arrive here. They have no right to be here. They have no papers, et cetera. They are desperate. They have no choice. They can't go back home," Malan said. "And, against all odds, they have created a situation where their unemployment rate is half of what South Africa's unemployment rate is. By virtue of hard work and keeping their prices low and providing good service to the people, they are making inroads in the market."

The research also found that immigrants who are not able to become self-employed have opted to work in restaurants, construction and farms where they are paid very low wages. The report, however, says even in these jobs, they have improved their economic conditions, as well as the country's.

Kerwin Lebone, analyst at IRR and head of the Center for Risk Analysis, says if South Africans commit to learning from these foreigners, they will succeed despite difficult economic conditions.

"Very, very industrious also in finding opportunities," Lebone said. "There is no sense of entitlement. When there is competition they fight it economically, positively by offering lower prices rather than resorting to violence when there is encroachment of territory in terms of competition, but they are showing industriousness in response to market conditions."

Foreigners targeted

In 2008, 2015 and this year, xenophobic violence erupted in South Africa with locals accusing foreigners of taking their jobs and committing crimes. Last month, numerous shops and homes were looted and burned in Pretoria, and foreign residents were attacked. Nearly 140 people were arrested.

Immigrants also come from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Lesotho, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi and Nigeria. Many Pakistanis are now competing with Somali nationals in running small grocery shops throughout the country.

Most of these immigrants have fled political instability, war and poor economic conditions in their home countries.

The report urges policymakers in South Africa to set up systems that will help citizens benefit from the immigrants who appear to have adapted so well in a country with 27 percent unemployment.

Source: Voice of America

ISLAMABAD � Officials in Pakistan say that arrangements are in place to conduct a national census for the first time in 19 years starting Wednesday, and more than 200,000 troops will assist civilian enumerators in collecting the data.

Information minister Maryam Aurangzeb told a news conferences in Islamabad Sunday the 70-day door-to-door campaign will be concluded in two phases at a financial cost of around $185-million.

The minister explained that nearly 120,000 specially trained government workers have been deployed to undertake the much-needed census. She called on citizens to cooperate with the counters and warned against willfully giving false information, saying those found guilty would face a six-month jail term and a financial penalty of around $500.

Pakistan is ready for the sixth housing and population survey ... As we all know it has been after 19 years that we are going into this census process. We all know how distribution of resources, evidence-based legislation and policy-making are important for policy of the country for social service provisions, she said.

Army spokesman Major-General Asif Ghafoor told reporters that his institutions has been tasked to provide security and ensure the census is conducted in a smooth and transparent manner.

A solider will accompany every civil enumerator and will also collect his own data during the door-to-door campaign. We have put in place a system to immediately verify the information, Ghafoor said. He added that more than 200,000 soldiers involved in the activity have undergone special training sessions.

Pakistan's population has exploded since its first consensus in 1951, when it had around 34 million inhabitants.

The World Bank estimated in 2015 the country's population at 190 million, but Pakistani officials still use the figure of 134.7 million from the census conducted in 1998 for planning development programs. An estimated 60 percent of Pakistanis are under the age of 30.

Activists blame the lack of census, among major factors, for depleting health and education services, increasing malnutrition and stunting and pressure on scarce water resources.

Pakistan has been battling an Islamic militancy for more than 13 years that officials cite as a major reason for the long delay in holding the census.

The population census is also used to assign electoral seats in Pakistan's parliament.

Critics say mainstream and regional political parties have influenced previous census exercises in the country, leading to over-representations of some regions in the parliament.

Officials say that around three million registered and unregistered Afghan refugees in Pakistan will also be counted in the census.

The decision has outraged leaders, particularly in southwestern Baluchistan province where the ethnic Baluch population fears it would turn them into a minority in their native region.

Parities in southern Sindh province, particularly in its capital, Karachi, have also opposed the inclusion of Afghans and have demanded the census be postponed until all the refugees return to their country.

But government officials have dismissed those concerns as unfounded and politically-motivated.

Pakistan's transgender community would also be included in the census for the first time in the country's history. Officials say the U.N. Population Fund has agreed to assign international observers to oversee the administration of the census.

Source: Voice of America

In Punjab, 18 suspects were arrested in joint search operation in Lahore, Dera Ghazi Khan, Rajanpur, Narowal, and Attock on Thursday.Arms and ammunition were also recovered from them.Source: Radio Pakistan

H&M group becomes the first global fashion brand to join the United Nations’ Better Than Cash Alliance NEW YORK, March 8, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — The Swedish fashion company H&M group announced today that it will encourage its suppliers to pay their workers through mobile money or other digital forms to improve the livelihoods of its workforce, […]