"Of (In)human Bondage: A Call to Compassion"
Rekha Abel
Sunday, June 13th 2004

On May 22nd of this year, I attended two weddings. One of the brides was Hindu and the other was Muslim. In India, the history of conflict between the Hindus and the Muslims is much older than our Independence. So what brought these two young women together? And the two young men who married them? It was the life of the 2 young women before they married. Both of them were born into families who lived on less than 30$ a month. Trafficked into sexual slavery when they were x years old, they had been servicing 2 to 3 men a day for 10$ for the past x years, one of them is HIV positive. They were rescued from a brothel x months ago and were restored to humanity through the efforts of a group of concerned and compassionate individuals. Today, they are free, economically and socially independent and in charge of their own lives. And the two young men? They too are from families that live on less than 30$ a month but manifest a compassion and hope in humanity.

The wedding was conducted in a place called Aastha Nivas. Aastha Nivas is home to close to 100 girl children ranging from 3 - 15. These children too have been rescued from brothels or from other sexually abusive situations. Their lives are short - close to 90% of these children are HIV positive - a brutal gift given to them by the adults they have come into contact with. But these children are for the first time, after months or years of having been brutalized, experiencing a sense of security, hope and most important of all, a return to childhood.

While I did begin with a story of hope, these women and children are but the fortunate few who have managed to free themselves. Thousands of women and children continue to be sex slaves in brothels in India and several hundred thousands all over India and South Asia at large are vulnerable to being trafficked for a variety of purposes.

So what is trafficking? The Human Rights Watch has the following to say on the subject:

Trafficking in persons - the illegal and highly profitable recruitment, transport, or sale of human beings for the purpose of exploiting their labor - is a slavery-like practice that must be eliminated. The trafficking of women and children into bonded sweatshop labor, forced marriage, forced prostitution, domestic servitude, and other kinds of work is a global phenomenon. Traffickers use coercive tactics including deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat and use of physical force, and/or debt bondage to control their victims. Women are typically recruited with promises of good jobs in other countries or provinces, and, lacking better options at home, agree to migrate. Through agents and brokers who arrange the travel and job placements, women are escorted to their destinations and delivered to the employers. Upon reaching their destinations, some women learn that they have been deceived about the nature of the work they will do; most have been lied to about the financial arrangements and conditions of their employment; and all find themselves in coercive and abusive situations from which escape is both difficult and dangerous.
Trafficking in South Asia happens for a variety of reasons - prostitution, camel jockeys, domestic servitude, debt bondage, adoption, organ trade, and so on. Reports indicate that trafficking of humans is the third largest money-spinner after drugs and weapons. The estimated annual turnover is 7 - 13 billion dollars. Women and children are trafficked out of the South Asia region, within the region and within countries in the region.

Having said what trafficking is, I’d like to spend a couple of moments on the magnitude of the problem in India:

The Indian context for trafficking in human person has its roots in the marginalization and alienation of communities under religious, cultural and socio political practices. Women and children from the marginalized sections particularly have been worst victims. Commercialization of this process has resulted in women and children being trafficked increasingly for sexual exploitation and child labor. Every day children are trafficked across the country and through out Asia, with India being the source country as well as transit and destination point.

Among the more alarming facts that have been unearthed over the last few years is the declining age of the victims. The increased demand for fresh, young “goods” has correspondingly placed young children from the marginalized sections at a much greater risk exposing them to an incomprehensibly perverted adult world of sex, forced labor and HIV/AIDS.

I have spoken only of the most brutal form of trafficking - for commercial sexual exploitation. As I said earlier there are several, and each of them is exploitative, demeaning and dehumanizing. Each of them erodes the dignity of the human person. It is here that Catholic Relief Services is seeking to make a difference. Bound by the principles of Catholic Social Teaching we believe that human life is sacred and the dignity of the human person is the starting point for a moral vision of society. It is precisely this that our anti trafficking program, and I should add all our programs, is striving to achieve - the restoration of dignity and preventing the erosion of dignity. For CRS a secure woman or child is one who is able to keep safe from harm (abuse and illness), meet basic needs including food and shelter, participate in quality education, prepare for a dignified livelihood, and ultimately enjoy a sense of social well-being. These conditions constitute the essential qualities of a meaningful experience for children of every age. Child and Women Security activities include safety, satisfaction of basic needs, learning and livelihood opportunities, and social well-being.

Along with our partners, we seek to rescue, restore, rehabilitate and reintegrate victims of sexual, physical and social abuse. As the world has grown more global, the problems of vulnerability to exploitation of women and children have grown and crossed borders within South Asia and beyond to other regions like the Middle East. CRS and in particular our partners have expanded their mandate to deal with these new threats. Through our efforts many hundreds of people have been rescued and their basic human dignity restored. In the process, CRS and our partners have expanded the number of Church-based institutions into a growing network to disseminate concrete solutions to exploitative work. We have expanded our networks with other like-minded organizations both within the region and beyond. Through CRS’ headquarters office in the United States we expect to multiply this growing network of partners and actors to reflect the very global nature of the threat to South Asia’s women and children. CRS is proud to be a part of this work. We invite your support to this cause.

When I say we invite your support - it is a call to compassion and a rethinking of our rights and responsibilities as human beings. I’d like to take you back for a moment to the weddings I spoke about at the beginning. While it seems miraculous and seemingly reminiscent of the marriage at Cana where water was turned to wine, I do not see it as a miracle. It was an instance of human beings being what they are meant to be - compassionate and aware of their rights and responsibilities in ensuring human dignity. This becomes important in a world that is increasingly too busy to ‘stop and stare’. How much does it cost to restore a person to humanity? USD 500. Is that too high a price for human dignity? Well, that is a question we need to ask ourselves!

In conclusion, I’d like to share a dream with you. A dream that all of us in CRS are working towards and which is best articulated by the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken into fragments by narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arm towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Thank You!

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