Human-trafficking affects 40+ million people around the globe. Climate change, gender inequality, systemic racism, poverty, neoliberal capitalism, war and conflict, forced migration drive its proliferation. Traffickers make billions of dollars through forced labour, commercial sex and organ removal. Force, fraud and coercion enable the sale, control and criminalization of vulnerable people. Black, Indigenous, People of Colour, LGBTQ+ youth, and people facing homelessness or poverty are among the most vulnerable. The majority are women and children.1
Trafficking of persons is slavery in its modern-day form.
As I learn more about “the business of stealing freedom for profit,” I am confronted by the pervasiveness of this exploitation. People may be trafficked internationally or within their home country. A neighbourhood restaurant, the nail salon down the street, a highway construction site are potential trafficking venues. Polaris, a US research project that analyzed 32,000 cases between 2007 and 2016, identified 25 distinct business models used by traffickers. The project advises, too, that the best way to help is to pay attention to the people one knows and interacts with daily.2
In 2007, LifeWay Network Inc. was founded by Joan Dawber, a Sister of Charity of Halifax, in New York City. Envisioning “a world in which human trafficking is abolished and every survivor is strong, connected and free,” LifeWay recognizes that survivors need a space of security and comfort that enables their physical and emotional healing. Since 2012, the organization has been running long-term transitional safe housing where survivors live in community, normally for a year, and are provided with the resources necessary to rebuild their lives. Under the direction of Marion Kendall since 2019, LifeWay is the only organization in metro New York City that offers long-term safe housing to foreign- and domestic-born survivors of trafficking in all of its forms. Through education about labour, organ and sex trafficking, the organization seeks to increase public awareness of and engagement in the prevention of human trafficking.3
Recognizing human trafficking as an RNDM mission priority, 2023 marks the beginning of RNDM collaboration with LifeWay Network in New York City. As a host community member in one of LifeWay’s safe houses, I sensed, within the first days of my arrival, that I had entered into a space of healing and restoration. Moved by the at-times obvious vulnerability of survivors I am encountering, I recognize the invitation to journey alongside residents with reverence and trauma-informed care. I realize how lucky I have been to have grown up in the embrace of a loving family and to have enjoyed safety and protection throughout my life.
Within days of my arrival, too, it was heartening to witness the influence of the LifeWay safe house program in the life of a young woman, survivor of trafficking, ready to move on to independent living with reclaimed joy and hope-filled optimism.
I will continue to pay attention.
1 US Catholic Sisters Against Human Trafficking, 2023, https://sistersagainsttrafficking.org/ . Monthly issues of their “Stop Trafficking! Awareness Advocacy Action” Newsletter are available at this site, dating back to 2003.
2 Polaris, “The Typology of Modern Slavery” 1 Mar 2017, https://polarisproject.org/the-typology-of-modern-slavery/ . Polaris is a nonprofit organization operating the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline.
3 “Our Vision and Mission” LifeWay Network, 2022, https://lifewaynetwork.org/vision-mission/ .
Claudia Stecker is a Sister of Our Lady of the Missions (RNDM). She was missioned to the Philippines in 1997 and worked as an educator, first, in Cotabato, at Notre Dame University, and, later, in Manila, at Asian Social Institute. Her subject areas included pastoral sociology, leadership, music and education. Claudia was also employed by Kuya Center for Street Children where she took part in establishing a microfinance initiative among urban poor families. Over the years, Claudia served the congregation, too, in leadership, formation and finance management, returning to Canada in 2021. From 2023, she has been missioned to New York, USA, where she serves as a host community member in a LifeWay Network safehouse for women survivors of human trafficking.
Thank you for your informative and disturbing post, which brings the reality of trafficking into stark relief – “slavery in its modern-day form”. You bring the magnitude of the problem into clear focus.
I often think of Thomas Berry’s dictum that “Earth is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects”. How antithetical human trafficking is to that deep insight. How important your attention and love.