UN human trafficking seminar seeks preventative measures

Monday, March 19th, 2018

A human trafficking seminar looking at ways to prevent the sale of people was held in New York last week.

The seminar was co-sponsored by the Vatican’s mission to the United Nations (UN).

Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the Vatican representative to the UN, says women and girls are especially vulnerable to being ensnared by traffickers.

He says this is because “they regularly lack access to adequate schooling and health, and are often marginalised, stigmatised and isolated due to poverty, unemployment and the lack of rural infrastructure”.

He explained these girls and women are “especially vulnerable to the lies of traffickers who promise them good work, good food, and education in the big cities.

“Rural girls are also vulnerable simply to running away to the cities believing that is a way to improve their lives; such girls, however, often find themselves floundering in the unknown environment and very easy prey to traffickers.”

He praised work by “heroic religious sisters” in rural areas all over the world.

He says these sisters “… are going to the existential peripheries to care for the wounds that often don’t come adequately to the attention of the rest of the world.”

Franciscan Missionaries of Mary Sister Annie Jesus Mary Louis, who works in rural tribal areas of India, says these people are especially vulnerable to exploitation.

Since 2010, she has been running projects aimed at preventing, rescuing, and accompanying people at risk of trafficking.

As a result of this work she has been able to rescue more than 100 women and girls from various cities and help them back into their home communities. But more needs to be done, she says.

“Sexual exploitation is big business. It is governed by exactly the same principles as any commercial activity: supply and demand,” she told the meeting.

She explained traffickers know the people she works with are very poor, with little education, sanitation, or health care and are sometimes so desperate that they willingly sell their own children.

A woman who escaped human traffickers also spoke at the seminar.

She described her journey, trafficked from ambitious, naive rural girl to hopeless, drug-fueled urban prostitute, and then her rehabilitation to a new life as an outreach worker. Her speech resulted in a standing ovation.

The International Labor Organisation estimates human trafficking generates roughly $32 billion a year in profits and claims roughly 40 million victims.

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