Defending Women’s Rights and Dignity

The following is a guest blog by Sr. Eugenia Bonetti.

Human trafficking is one of the greatest affronts to human dignity of our time. It claims an estimated 27 million victims globally, primarily women and children, many forced into prostitution. And it is a lucrative trade, generating roughly $32 billion annually for well organized crime groups worldwide.

After working as a missionary in Africa for 24 years, in 1993 I was called back to work as a missionary in my own country, Italy. Here I was rudely awakened to the reality of human trafficking when a victim – alone, distraught, hopeless – turned to the crisis Caritas centre I was staffing in northern Italy.

That young woman – and thousands of others like her over the years to come – educated me about the brutal reality of human trafficking, pimps and mamas, clients (aka ‘johns’), sexually-transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancy, violence and even death.

In response to this growing phenomenon, in the year 2000 the Italian Union of Major Superiors (USMI) created a Counter-Trafficking Office to network the ministry of 250 nuns belonging to 80 Congregations providing about 100 shelters throughout Italy.

Our aim is to offer protection, support and reintegration into society to trafficking victims. To date, more than 6,000 victims have been helped off the streets, given official documents to stay and work in Italy and begin their lives anew – with dignity.

Religious sisters also meet victims still on the streets, to offer them opportunities for a different dignified life. And we visit Centres for identification and expulsion to offer support and pastoral care to women awaiting deportation to their counties.

Diplomatic networks need to support the battle to find an end to this plague that is destroying a generation of young women as well as the harmony of many families.

I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary William Hague, whom I met recently in London, for his commitment to fighting sexual violence. I believe strongly in his approach that “civil society, communities and international organizations” need to work together to prevent sexual violence of all kinds.

Only in cooperation – not competition – will we be able to break the chains that bind so many victims of human trafficking and put an end to modern-day slavery once and for all. It is when organizations and individuals motivated and fortified by faith and conviction take concrete actions that they can revolutionize the world.

The least of God’s people – victims of human trafficking – are waiting for us.