Human trafficking for labor, sex global crisis, Catholic social ministry leaders say

Catholic News Service
Feb. 16, 2006

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WASHINGTON – Trafficking in humans – for slave labor or the sex industry – is a global problem, speakers told a national conference of Catholic social ministry leaders Feb. 14.

Mary DeLorey, a Catholic Relief Services policy and advocacy official, said that by conservative estimates victims of human trafficking number somewhere between 700,000 and 2 million people around the world and they are "primarily women and children."

"It's a justice issue, it's a human rights issue. It's a mission that belongs to all of us," said Sister Mary Ellen Dougherty of the U.S. bishops' Migration and Refugee Services (MRS). A member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, Sister Dougherty is manager for outreach, education and technical assistance in MRS' human trafficking program.

Leading a workshop on the causes and impacts of human trafficking, the two women told the group that there is a need to raise people's awareness about the extent of human trafficking, its largely hidden nature and ways to combat it.

"It's going to take a very sustained and widespread effort," DeLorey said. Human trafficking, she added, "is a profound human rights violation and abuse of human dignity."

She described human trafficking as "the forced use of human beings" as objects of commerce. Poverty, lack of opportunity and vulnerability are key factors in who is victimized, she said. She said victims are generally lured by promises of employment, though some may be abducted or sold.

Sister Dougherty said the United States estimates that about 16,000 people are trafficked into the United States every year, but in the five years since passage of a new federal law against human trafficking, only 947 victims have been certified as such. Of these, "720 were female, 227 were male" and just 10 percent were children, she said.

Under U.S. law international trafficking victims, if recognized as such, are entitled to refugee status, she said, and MRS has been involved in resettling about 150 of those victims.

When underage victims are forced into the sex business, she said, the U.S. mentality about juvenile delinquency often prevents their being recognized as victims. They are seen as teenage prostitutes, or criminals, rather than as the victims of commercial sex with a minor, which is a crime throughout the United States, she said.

If minors caught up in prostitution are viewed as victims rather than criminals, the response will be quite different, she said.

She said the United States is one of only 17 countries that have enacted specific laws against human trafficking.

DeLorey said conflict and emergencies such as natural disasters can open doors of opportunity for international gangs and cartels that engage in human trafficking.

She recalled that when the tsunamis hit the coastal areas of about a dozen Indian Ocean countries in late 2004, separating families and making many children orphans, the warnings by religious and humanitarian agencies about the human trafficking potential caught media attention and forced governments in the region to take preventive measures.

Large numbers of women were trafficked out of Kosovo during and after the conflict there, she said.

She said because of the relationship between conflict and increased human trafficking there is a need to "make sure our own military and peacekeepers are not involved in trafficking."

The spread of HIV and AIDS has led to increased trafficking in children for the sex industry because customers seek younger partners who are HIV-free to avoid contracting the disease, she said. In some parts of the world, she added, there is a myth that someone who has HIV can be cured by having sex with a child.

She said it is necessary to look at the political and economic forces that contribute to poverty, lack of employment opportunities and other conditions that make people vulnerable and increase their risk of becoming victims of human trafficking. As an example, she said, when the United States enters international trade agreements, it should be analyzing what impact those agreements will have on the poor.

There is a great deal of "pressure on countries, especially of the South, to eliminate social spending" to compete in a globalized economy, she said, and with the growing global mobility of capital and goods "there is a race to the bottom in labor costs."

"When social safety nets are removed, it is primarily women and children who are affected," she said.

Sister Dougherty said human trafficking is connected with drug trafficking, extortion and other forms of organized crime. "When you get a trafficker, you get a recruiter, you get an enforcer," she said.

When the Soviet bloc dissolved, she said, gangs of entrepreneurs who had become experts at working the thriving underground economy under communism turned their expertise to human trafficking.

Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops