By Aamer Ahmed Khan BBC News, Karachi

Parents in poorer areas are easily persuaded to part with children

"There is no telling how many are there but their number certainly runs into thousands."

Few in Pakistan will disagree with Sarim Burney's assessment of the number of Pakistani children currently working as camel jockeys in the Gulf.

Mr Burney has been Pakistan's premier anti-slavery campaigner for more than 18 years.

In this period, his organisation - the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust - has secured the release and repatriation of hundreds of Pakistani children from the Gulf states.

Children from other countries in South Asia end up as child jockeys, but most are from Pakistan.

Board and lodging

A group of 22 children returned recently to be housed at the state-run Child Protection and Welfare Centre in the Punjab. Another 86 arrived back in Pakistan on Friday.

Child camel jockeys find hope

The children are provided board, lodging and psychiatric help at the centre while their parents are traced.

Officials at the centre - which handed over nine children to their parents last week - say that they are reunited only after their parents guarantee that they will not send their children back to the Gulf.

But for the likes of Mr Burney, such guarantees mean little.

"The fact that so many children are coming back in itself means that we have had some success in our efforts," Mr Burney told the BBC News website.

"But we still have a long way to go."

On Tuesday, the United Arab Emirates passed a decree banning children under 18 from riding as camel jockeys.

However, the practice has been illegal since 1980 and it remains to be seen how effective the new law will be.

There has been a relentless demand for young, lightweight children to act as jockeys in the Gulf.

"Trying to convince the Arab sheikhs against using children as camel jockeys is like trying to break an addiction," says Mr Burney.

"They are crazy about the sport."

This essentially means that if the traffic is to be stopped, it has to be cut off at source.

'Fake passports'

Pakistan's track record has been less than encouraging.

The fact that the practice has continued for nearly 15 years after the story first hit the headlines is evidence of the difficulties involved in tackling the issue Sarim Burney, anti-slavery campaigner

The issue first came to light in Pakistan in the early 1990s.

Intense media interest forced many of the Gulf kingdoms to ban the use of children under 15 for camel racing.

"The move failed miserably because child traffickers simply got fake passports which stated a four-year-old's age as 16," says Mr Burney.

Besides, many of the sheikhs had direct access to the areas from where these children were recruited.

Most of the repatriated children hail from the south-east Punjab districts of Bahawalpur, Dera Ghazi Khan and Rahimyar Khan. This is no coincidence.

These districts are the preferred hunting grounds for Gulf sheikhs, some of whom go there every year to hunt the houbara bustard - a protected bird whose meat is widely regarded as an aphrodisiac by Arabs.

Its hoped the use of robots will reduce demand for jockeys

The three districts are also home to the Cholistan - one of Pakistan's two main deserts and one of the few areas in the country where camels are regularly used for travel and trade.

It is easy to convince parents here to part with their children for a camel jockey's wage. They may get a meagre $82 a month but it is a sum a family would struggle for months to earn.

"It is very difficult to break through this combination of poverty, illiteracy and a total disregard for the law," says Mr Burney.

Unfortunately for the children involved, it is also an area where the government is reluctant to act for fear of causing diplomatic embarrassment to valued Arab friends.