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What is human trafficking?
Human Trafficking is the exploitation of a person through the use of
force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of forced labor or commercial
sexual exploitation. Traffickers lure vulnerable people with false
promises of good jobs, an education, economic security and even love.
Traffickers are able to keep their victims from seeking help by
confiscating identification documents, threatening violence, and
subjecting the victim to physical, psychological or sexual abuse.
Human Trafficking: Key Facts
- 12.3 million people live in conditions of forced labor, bonded
labor and sexual exploitation worldwide. Profits from human
trafficking are estimated at $32 billion dollars (International
Labor Organization, 2009)
- Approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across international
borders each year.
U.S. State Dept., Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, 2008
- In the United States, victims of trafficking include both U.S.
citizens and foreign nationals. Foreign victims are trafficked
primarily to provide cheap labor in domestic servitude, agriculture,
manufacturing, janitorial services, health and elder care, hair and
nail salons, and strip club dancing. Most of the victims who
are U.S. citizens are found in sex trafficking. Child victims
are often runaway and homeless youth. (U.S. State Dept., TIP
Report, 2010)
What does the Church say?
The seventh commandment forbids acts or enterprises that for any
reason—selfish or ideological, commercial or totalitarian—lead to the
enslavement of human beings, to their being bought, sold and exchanged
like merchandise, in disregard for their personal dignity. It is a sin
against the dignity of persons and their fundamental rights to reduce
them by violence to their productive value or to a source of profit.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2414
. . . Whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living
conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution,
the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working
conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than
as free and responsible persons; all these things . . are infamies
indeed.
Vatican Counsel II, Gaudium et Spes, 1965
Human trafficking will never be truly defeated without eliminating
the consumerism that feeds it and prosecuting those actors in receiving
countries, including our own, that benefit because of the exploitation
of vulnerable human beings.
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, On Human
Trafficking, 2007
Learn more at these websites:
U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops
http://www.usccb.org/about/human-trafficking/
Intercommunity Peace & Justice Center
(IPJC)
http://www.ipjc.org/links/trafficking.htm
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