Trafficking women and children

A February training workshop on trafficking in women and children in Toronto drew 40 members of faith-based groups, service organizations, and police services. Participants spent the day learning how to raise community awareness of human trafficking, a grave violation of human rights which, during the past 15 years, has become widespread in many countries around the world, and in Canada.

The numbers of people at the workshop was a sign that community groups and governments are starting to realize how serious the human trafficking problem has become.

Representatives of groups such as the International Organization for Migration have for years been speaking of the large numbers of people, many of them women and children, being purchased and shipped across borders, usually illegally, every year. Many governments around the world are currently planning modest initiatives to stem the trafficking tide. In 2004, Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler estimated the annual worldwide human trafficking revenues at $10 billion a year. He pledged to amend the Criminal Code to deal with what he called the "scourge" of trafficking.

Community groups and governments have found it difficult to grapple with human trafficking, partly because it is a specific practice that needs to be distinguished from the general movement across borders of people without documents seeking safer or more secure lives.

"Trafficking" has been defined by the United Nations as the recruitment of people through deception or force for the purpose of extracting sexual or other services from them. One estimate of the number of people trafficked worldwide annually is from 700,000 to two million. There currently is no specific information about the number of people trafficked into Canada every year, but the figure is almost certainly in the thousands. Another obstacle to public awareness of trafficking is that traffickers are seldom caught, and, when they are, they are usually charged with offences such as "living off the avails of prostitution," rather than with trafficking.

Religious women are in the forefront of efforts to do pubic education and to stop human trafficking. The Canadian Religious Conference (CRC) organized the Feb. 5 workshop as part of an awareness-raising project originally proposed by the Rome-based International Union of Superiors General (UISG) in 2001. CRC fieldworker Sheila Smith, who organized the workshop, told CNT: "Women religious in Canada and elsewhere have personally encountered human trafficking because they work with the poor, refugees, and aboriginal populations." The workshop was based on a workshop kit published by the UISG.

Workshop facilitators Joan Atkinson and Sue Wilson helped participants to explore the issues by posing three questions that are partially answered in the UISG trafficking kit: What is happening? Why is it happening? What can we do?

Answers to the first question emerged from the reading and telling of stories, and the discovery of patterns in the stories. For example, participants learned about the experience of Lena, whose story is told in the UISG kit.

"Our families thought we would make good money and be able to help at home ... In China, they burned our passports. When Masha tried to fight them, they beat her and raped her in front of us." The facilitators helped the group to develop a systemic analysis of human trafficking that includes individual stories, the policies of governments and other institutions, and the visions of the world that shape institutions.

The day ended with a discussion of actions that might be taken to build awareness about human trafficking. The facilitators also distributed a list of ideas for organizing a workshop, which can be used together with the UISG workshop kit.

Resources: Trafficking in Women and Children. Information and Workshop Kit, by the UISG Working Group on Trafficking in Women and Children, can be ordered through the email address aderoeper@lasalle.org The cost is approximately Cdn$15. Kits are available in English, French, Spanish, and Italian.

Government of Canada website (canada.justice.gc.ca) Stop the Trafficking Coalition (www.stopthetrafficking.org) Canadian Council for Refugees (www.web.net/~ccr/fronteng.htm)

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