What is human trafficking?

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What is human trafficking?

Slavery is supposed to have been abolished, but it’s come back . Today we call it trafficking, and it’s alive and well and thriving in the 21st century . Traffickers prey on the poor and powerless, using force or deception to abduct and imprison them, or otherwise establish control over them and deprive them of any freedom of action . Often the victims are removed to distant places, far from any family members or social networks that could protect them, and it is common practice to smuggle them across national borders . Huge profits are generated for organised crime by exploiting and selling the sexual services, labour and organs of trafficked human beings .

Trafficking wrecks the lives of millions of women and men, girls and boys across the world today . In 2013 a group of religious women met with Pope Francis to ask him to establish a worldwide day of prayer for victims of human trafficking . When he asked them what date they thought would be most suitable, they proposed the feastday of St Josephine Bakhita: 8th February, and so it was agreed . Herself a trafficked child who not only survived to tell her story, but went on to find inner healing and true happiness, Josephine Bakhita brings home to us the horror of trafficking, yet also offers a message of hope to its victims .

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Black Mother

Children arriving for the first time at the Canossian Convent in Schio - to be enrolled in the day school or nursery, or the boarding unit, or just to take part in a sewing class or a youth club - were usually startled to find that one of the nuns was black . This was in the 1920s and 1930s and hardly anyone in this quiet little north Italian town had ever seen a black person before . Very small children had been known to run away screaming in terror . But the kindly African Sister never seemed embarrassed, and soon put them at their ease . All of them quickly grew to love her, and whenever she appeared they flocked to her side . It was customary to address the nuns as “Mother”, and properlyspeaking she should have been Mother Josephine . But everyone called her “Black Mother” .

Every Sunday the children besieged her, clinging to her long skirts and clamouring for a story . Black Mother’s stories left behind the same deep-down, satisfying feel as a good fairy tale . The fact that they didn’t have any fairies in, and had happened “for real”, was completely beside the point . Fairy tales come in all shapes and sizes, but essentially they offer assurances about life . A typical scenario has a young person leaving home, sometimes very abruptly, to go out into the big wide world, and there face a series of apparently insuperable obstacles . But the obstacles can be overcome, and overcoming them wins the reward of a kingdom and an ideal marriage and being

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“happy ever after” . The underlying message is: “Don’t be afraid, because a kind providence is watching over you, and - you’ll see - everything will work out in the end . ”