HUMAN TRAFFICKING - MODERN DAY SLAVERY
Trafficking causes unimaginable misery and suffering to those who are dehumanized, forced to become commodities that are bought, sold, used and abused.     Reading the definition of trafficking given below will no doubt send shivers down the spines of many readers.  What is even more chilling is the fact that trafficking is not very far from our own doors.

A presentation given by Clare Nolan a Good Shepherd Sister identifies the essential evil of trafficking and the individual human response from every person that its very existence cries out for.  “What is at stake in the issue of human trafficking is our core spiritual belief that every human person is of infinite worth and dignity, not a commodity to be bought and sold for profit in an underground marketplace. Human trafficking is a grating cry in our time that implicates all of society. Our actions matter as to whether or not we re-claim, as members of our human family, those lost and in bondage to trafficking.”

When referring to the victims of trafficking a recent statement of the Irish Bishops Conference says: “We all have a serious Christian obligation to care for those who have become trapped in this way”.  This resource seeks to inform readers and to point to the response that we as people with a mission to love one another and to welcome the stranger in our midst are called on to make.  It also points a way for further research into this topic.  

DEFINITION The trafficking of human beings is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people for the purpose of exploitation. This includes persons forced into prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.

For children exploitation may include also, illicit international adoption, trafficking for early marriage, recruitment as child soldiers, for begging, or for sports (such as child camel jockeys or football players).

Trafficking involves a process of using illicit means such as 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.