July 30 is the United Nations World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, and sisters are working as ever to eradicate forced labor and sex, which victimizes 21 million people globally. They also are working to change perceptions about human trafficking, calling it part of larger human rights violations, not a "single isolated event."
Theodore Kiro held 13-month-old Navya on her return to his family after they were separated for a week. The crying baby happily clung to Kiro, whom she knows as her grandfather.
A federal ministry in India has ordered inspections of all child care homes run by the Missionaries of Charity, the congregation founded by Mother Teresa, after a lay employee reportedly confessed to selling babies for adoption, reported ucanews.com.
Facing child trafficking allegations at one of its homes for unmarried mothers in India, the Missionaries of Charity said the order condemns the actions of individuals involved and stressed that these are unrelated to the order.
Indian officials are seeking to freeze bank accounts of the Missionaries of Charity following the arrest of a nun on child trafficking charges in Jharkhand state.
A court in the eastern Indian city of Ranchi sent a Missionaries of Charity nun to 14 days of judicial custody July 5 after she was arrested on charges of child trafficking.
"I object to the notion that anyone can be trafficked as if everything can be reduced to girls and young women being plucked from the streets. ... The larger dynamic is that trafficking tends to be at the far end of a continuum of violence and exploitation that already existed in many girls' lives."
Talitha Kum leaders from 17 networks around the world capped off two weeks of training in Rome with an online panel discussion June 13 of best practices to fight human trafficking.
A new report finds that human traffickers who prey on guest workers in the US are relying heavily on gaps in accountability within the temporary work visa system. Based on national hotline data from 2015 to 2017, 797 individuals are believed to be victims.
The fight against human trafficking and sexual exploitation may need its own #MeToo moment, according to a leading trafficking opponent. Good Shepherd Sr. Winifred Doherty, who is her religious congregation's representative to the United Nations, observed that sex trafficking, "a debasement of the human person," is "rooted in the structure of society, and more so today."
Like what you're reading? Sign up for GSR e-newsletters!