SANCTIONING PAKISTAN
(Multinational Monitor, April 1996)

  Pressure from U.S.-Based human rights group forced the Clinton Administration in March to impose partial trade sanctions against Pakistan for its failure to abolish bonded labor and child labor.
  The U.S. government's punitive action will lead to suspension of Pakistan's benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program in three categories of goods when it is reauthorized by the U.S. Congress in December, officials say.
  Though confined to only three categories of goods, the GSP suspension is likely to cause Pakistan to lose millions of dollars in exports to the United States. The three categories of goods are hand-made carpets, surgical instruments and sports goods.
  In 1995, export of these goods to the United States earned Pakistan about $88 million.
  The U.S. Department of Labor estimates there are one million children in servitude engaged in the carpet industry in South Asia - more than half of them in Pakistan and India.
  Describing the U.S. decision as "appropriate", Patricia Gossman, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, says, "It can be a good pressure device to force the Pakistan government to enforce labor laws."
  But some Pakistani scholars and activists disagree.
  "This is no way to solve the problem of child labor and bonded labor. Such actions will only add to the miseries of the poor over there," observes Dr. Manzoor Ejaz, a Pakistan-born U.S. economist.
  Ejaz says that pressure from global financial institutions - controlled by the United States and other rich natlons - is part of Pakistan's problem. "The World Bank and IMF continue to exert pressure on Third World countries for export-oriented growth, which makes it easy for corrupt government leaders to shrug off responsibility for workers' rights."

(By Haider Rizvi)

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