Human Trafficking

Recently I went down to an informative and inspiring Orientation Day at the United Nations in Manhattan. This day was offered by the NGO-Partnership for Global Justice. Present at my workshop were students, faculty members from colleges/universities and workers and interns for various organizations from around the world in places such as Peru, Kenya, Albania, Missouri and Philadelphia. Ages ranged from early 20s to 50s. We learned about Disarmament, Sustainability, Human Trafficking, and had a mission visit to Kenya. Seeing and listening to all the people working toward peace and justice was so powerful.

The presentation on human trafficking really moved me. To think that in today’s world human beings are being taken out of their own countries and placed into sex slavery and abusive situations is just awful. We were shown a picture of three young boys of about 10 years old out on the street being paraded around as prostitutes and it just tore my heart up. That image was in my mind as I left to go home.

When I got on the subway, I realized that there was some type of gang advertisement or enticement going on. On both sides of the train were 2 young men (18-21) from different gangs and with them each were about 5 or 6 young boys ranging 11-15 years of age. Each crowd was holding some type of pornographic video or picture and they were having loud discussions with nasty sexual language and curse word across the subway. All on the crowded subway train kept their eyes to the ground.

A few days later, on the subway again, I saw an older Asian man selling for $5 current movie DVDs. A man said he would buy one if it worked so he took a DVD from the Asian man’s hands and popped it into his DVD player. The look of fear on the Asian man’s face was so intense and he kept saying you owe me $5. The movie ended up not working and the DVD was placed back in its wrapper. This Asian man then jumped off our subway car at the next stop. He looked so exhausted and scared.

I was so struck that right after hearing about human trafficking in a global sense; I
came across it right in my own backyard. We must work to stop this!!!!!! It is a horrible happening in our society. We, Ursulines, have made trafficking a central issue. We advocate for legislation against it and work toward providing safe housing for trafficked women.

Sr. Jeannie