18 November 2005

Remarks by Sébastien Dechamps at the Seminar on Trafficking in Persons. Rome, Centro Studi Americani, October 26, 2005

"The Commitment of Faith-based Organizations in Combating Trafficking in Persons"

"The trade in human persons constitutes a shocking offence against human dignity and a grave violation of fundamental human rights. Already the Second Vatican Council had pointed to ‘slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children, and disgraceful working conditions where people are treated as instruments of gain rather than free and responsible persons’, as ‘infamies’ which ‘poison human society, debase their perpetrators’ and constitute ‘a supreme dishonour to the Creator’ (Gaudium et Spes 27). Such situations are an affront to fundamental values that are shared by all cultures and peoples, values rooted in the very nature of the human person" 1

 

These words, spoken by the late Pope John Paul II, in May 2002, are an inspiration, and actually an appeal, to Christian organizations and institutions to engage in the fight against trafficking. As part of the Church, and inspired by our faith, indifference is not an option.

 

Actually, Churches and faith-based organizations, along with other actors in civil society, have for years denounced trafficking as an unacceptable human rights violation. Based on the Biblical conviction that “if one part of the body suffers, all the other parts of the body suffer with it – all of you then are Christ’s body and each one is a part of it” (1Cor 12, 26-27), churches and faith-based organizations have taken up the commitment to fight against all forms of slavery.

 

In order to understand better why and how faith-based organizations must and can be active against trafficking, let us quickly go over some facts about the nature and the magnitude of the problem.

 

There is a widely accepted definition of trafficking set out in the UN Convention against Trans-national Organised Crime, which is available on the paper that will be circulated 2. Here are some key points that are important for us to keep in mind when we talk to faith-based institutions:

 

• It can – and does - happen everywhere. It is not a “third-world issue”. It is a global issue. In Western Europe alone, we estimate that 120,000 women are trafficked annually from Central and Eastern Europe, mainly for the sex industry. But we are also talking about 20 million women who are enslaved in India, 25% of whom are under 18 years old. Tens of thousands of women from the former Soviet Union are trafficked into the Middle East, the Emirates, and Israel. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency estimates that 50,000 people are trafficked into or transited through the U.S.A. annually as sex slaves, domestic workers, workers in the garment industry, and agricultural slaves.
• Trafficking is not only a “sex issue”. Prostitution and the sex industry are indeed one of the major “drivers” of trafficking. But it’s not the only one. We’re also talking of children being kidnapped and sold for their organs. We’re talking of workers from poor countries lured into “slave-like” jobs. For example, as Middle East Desk Officer for Caritas Internationalis, I saw recent reports indicating that tens of thousands of people – people from poor countries such as the Philippines and Nepal – are now working in Iraq for less than 2$ an hour, often with their passports seized by the contractor.
• Trafficking in human beings does not always or necessarily involve the crossing of international borders. There are many examples where people living in extreme poverty are trafficked or sold into bondage and are exploited elsewhere in the same country. It is estimated that around 50,000 women have been sold into unwanted marriages in China.
• Trafficking is a well-organized activity, it’s a criminal activity, and it’s a very lucrative business. In terms of money, the UN estimates that the annual profit made by traffickers totals between 5 and 7 billion dollars, which makes it the second largest source of profit for organized crime after drug trafficking.
• There is a human rights issue, but there is also a moral dimension, a challenge for us because it’s a matter of values . We live in societies increasingly driven by consumerism ; we’ve even gotten to the point where human beings are considered merchandise.
• There are links between trafficking and other issues that are among our main concerns and core priorities. We are talking about the “Preferential Option for the Poor”: the poor are the main victims of trafficking – people from impoverished communities, children, women, minorities.

 

 

I think that at this point we understand why the Church is concerned and committed. It has not always been easy: questions related to sexuality are often still taboo, and compassion for trafficked women is often blurred by moralising attitudes and stereotypes. But we are moving forward.

 

Faith-based organizations are present in every country where trafficking occurs - in those villages in Nepal, Mexico, or Nigeria - where the victims come from. The Church is also present here in Italy, where at least 30,000 Nigerian women are forced into prostitution. Christians are no minority in the Philippines, where tens of thousands of women are lured into networks of forced labour.

There are several Catholic Churches in Lebanon or in Jordan (those are places I often visit), where so many women from Sri Lanka or the Philippines are treated like slaves.

 

So what kind of strategy can we design?

 

The very first involvement of Church personnel or institutions came from that proximity I just mentioned with the victims. Very often the Church staff has a privileged position of confidence. Convents are often the first places where women victims of violence go to for shelter, comfort, care, and loving compassion. A global network like Caritas (actually one of the largest non-governmental humanitarian network in the world) has a physical presence in more than 162 countries, with staff or volunteers present at all levels – dioceses, parishes, neighbourhoods, villages - where the most vulnerable people are found. The same is true for the religious orders.

 

An example of an effective strategy against trafficking is the initiative that we, as Caritas, have taken in building the COATNET network. COATNET is an acronym for “Christian Organizations Against Trafficking in Women Network”. Caritas Europa has taken the leadership in building this network. It now consists of more than 30 member organizations, mainly in Europe but also increasingly in other continents : Catholic Relief Services is a member, as are Caritas India, Caritas Nigeria, and Caritas Pakistan.

COATNET has four main objectives:

 

 

• Prevention and awareness raising: supporting and undertaking prevention activities, predominantly through awareness raising:
• awareness raising targeted at risk groups (which include people who actively intend to migrate in search of a job away from home, within or outside one’s own country, to migrants in an irregular situation, or to groups who, due to their circumstances, are more at risk of falling victim to the crime of trafficking),
• awareness raising targeted at various groups of educators and professionals (such as doctors, priests, nurses, non-specialised social workers and government officials), thus building an effective network of consistent and long-term awareness raising
• awareness raising targeted at the general public and also at the broad and diverse ‘demand side’ of the customers demanding sexual services or a cheap and exploitable source of labour. I’ll come back to this point later.

 

• Providing assistance to trafficked persons, including, secure shelter for trafficked persons in the countries of destination, transit and origin (for repatriated trafficked persons); providing individual social, medical, psychological, and legal assistance, as well as vocational training to empower trafficked persons professionally. Effective assistance requires trans-national cooperation and networking; in this respect, networking and cooperation with religious orders of sisters will be particularly valuable and effective. Note, in fully respecting the religious plurality of trafficked persons, effective assistance should also pay particular attention to the spiritual healing of the trafficked persons and to their full spiritual and mental rehabilitation in order to enable them to deal with the lifelong suffering invariably caused by trafficking.

 

• Advocacy: Political advocacy work is as important as assistance, and should particularly address the root causes of trafficking and the need for protection and assistance for the trafficked persons. Advocacy done in countries of destination and international institutions should specifically aim at ensuring that appropriate legislation is in place and properly enforced at national and international levels to protect trafficked persons, to punish traffickers, and to guarantee the rights of trafficked persons.

 

• Networking and cooperation: Caritas Internationalis and COATNET welcome cooperation with organisations that pursue similar objectives. Caritas Internationalis stresses the need to work, both nationally and internationally, in interdisciplinary networks, where we seek to improve the cooperation among authorities, NGOs and international organisations. Networking should aim at improving the trans-national assistance and protection to trafficked persons. Networking is also a tool for joint advocacy work in seeking the improvement and enforcement of legislation at international and national levels.

 

 

I would like to come back to that issue of networking.

 

As we said before, trafficking is a global problem, a global challenge. Faith-based organizations have the particular privilege and advantage of being present not only in almost every country in the world, but also of being close to all the different “social groups” which are part of this phenomenon.

•  

We are close to the victims. Women victims of trafficking will be in touch with the church, with the local Caritas, with the religious orders of sisters and brothers. We can also do our best to reach out to the children and men who have been victims of the “human trade”. We have made progress. We are networking more and more. An example: six weeks ago we had a very constructive meeting with delegates from all seven regions of the Caritas network. They acknowledged the need to be more in touch with all the religious orders in their countries, and to engage in prevention, care, and reintegration.

 

We can reach out to the “power brokers,” those who design legislation at national or international levels, and who should make sure that legislation is actually enforced and implemented. It is not an easy task, but we are getting better at this. Churches and faith-based organizations are investing in advocacy mechanisms. For instance, we at Caritas have permanent representatives to the United Nations, both in New York and Geneva. And we are not alone. Our work is much more effective when we join forces with like-minded groups like the Dominicans or Franciscans International, or with Ecumenical networks like the Churches’ Commission on Migrants in Europe, which mainly encompasses Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox Churches and their related organizations.

 

Last but not least, and this is probably one of the most difficult challenges, we have a great potential when it comes to addressing what we call the “demand side” of trafficking. We think that it is of particular importance to focus efforts on those who support and increase the “market” for human beings.

I’m talking of the “customer” who’s looking for prostitutes. I’m talking of the “business man” who’s looking for cheap labour, here in Europe, in the States, in Iraq, or in India.

The victims will often come to us to seek support and comfort. But I think we have a pressing responsibility to also meet those people who are feeding the process. They are people- sometimes Christian, Catholic - who won’t come to us with their problem. Do they even acknowledge the problem? We look forward to working more closely with the relevant Church-based institutions who will reach out to that “target group”. In particular, we believe that parish priests and male religious orders can play a much more active role in that regard. We look forward to welcoming them all to our “global network”. We must acknowledge and embrace the notion that men are both part of the problem and part of the solution!

 

To conclude - Caritas is driven by a vision. We believe in a world in which exclusion, discrimination, violence, intolerance and dehumanising poverty are no more. And where all people, especially the poorest, the marginalised and the oppressed, find hope and are empowered to come to the fullness of their humanity as part of a global community.

 

Our campaign against trafficking in human beings has a slogan: “Created in the image of God, treated like slaves….”. We are so happy to realize that we are many who share that common goal, and we look forward to joining forces with yet many others in order to make modern-day slavery history.

 

Thank you.

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(1) Letter to Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran on the occasion of the International Conference “Twenty-first Century Salvery – The human Rights Dimension to Trafficking in Human Beings”, Vatican City, 15 May 2002

 

(2) Caritas Internationalis adopts the definition for trafficking in human beings as set out in the protocols to the UN Convention against Trans-national Organised Crime. According to this Convention, “trafficking in human beings” means:

 

The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation includes, at a minimum, the exploitation or the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.