|
|
Home
> Vocation: Calling > Consecrated
Life > The Inside
Story > Stories
| One
of My Present Passions for Christ, for Humanity |
 One concern about which I have become very passionate is the trafficking of women and children. I have welcomed the opportunity over the past few years to share with others, particularly CWL groups, what I have learned about this grave human rights concern, to pray for an end to it and to take action against it.
Just a little background as to how this came about - In 1997, our General Chapter called us to education and action for human rights. This followed a meeting of some 800 General Superiors representing over one million Religious Women. Different religious communities committed themselves to different human rights.
Our international congregation, the School Sisters of Notre Dame (SSND), chose human trafficking, particularly the TRAFFICKING OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN for the sex slave trade, as our focus. This follows our mission call “to enable persons to reach the fullness of their potential as individuals created in God’s image” and our charism of “sensitivity to the poor, especially women and children”.
The awful reality is that in the 36 countries in which our sisters presently minister, human trafficking has been identified as a grave human rights issue – each of the countries is either a sending, a receiving, or a transit country, or all three. In light of this, we have committed ourselves to make a concerted effort internationally to address the trafficking of women and children through these 3 goals:
- to pray the trafficking prayer on or near the 9th of the month
- to learn more about trafficking
- to educate others on this topic
As I myself became educated on this issue I became more appalled at the blatant and gross inhumanity of men towards women and girls. “Human trafficking” is really a form of modern-day slavery where victims are taken from their own country to a foreign country and are exploited for sex or labour.
Astoundingly, the trafficking of humans is tied for second place with arms dealing as the largest criminal industry in the world. The drug dealing industry remains first. Human trafficking is also the fastest growing organized crime operation worldwide, and if unchecked, in 10 years is expected to be the top source of revenue.
Women and girls are bought and sold – like cattle (chattel) - from as low as $30. to as high as $10,000. or more. Their passports or other ID is taken away and they are made to work to buy it back; only the debt is never met because additional charges are continuously added. They are denied basic health care and food, forced to have unprotected sex, exposing them to AIDS, and are usually controlled by being forced to take drugs. They live in constant fear – for their own life and often for the life of a loved one back home.
The women who are being trafficked could are someone’s daughters, grand-daughters, sisters, mothers, wives, best friends.
Sex trafficking is as vicious as ever in its pursuit of profit from the commodification through buying and selling of women’s and children’s bodies. In the process, it perpetuates and legitimizes the continued subservience, oppression and exploitation of women and children, especially those of particular races, colours and economic need.
It devalues ALL women, treats us as if we were lesser beings somehow - as objects to be bought and sold and used at will by men. This is not in God’s plan. We have been created in the image and likeness of God; we are precious in God’s eyes, honoured and loved, as we read in Isaiah 43.
At the same time, we must face the fact that none of this horror would exist if our society did not create a demand for it, and if we as a worldwide community, stopped choosing to ignore it.
Sister Joyce Lorencz
|
