WCC NEWS: Human trafficking: violence against humanity

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World Council of Churches - News

HUMAN TRAFFICKING: VIOLENCE AGAINST HUMANITY

For immediate release: 22 May 2011

Fourteen-year old Gudiya Putul is not in Kingston, Jamaica attending the
International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC), but her name and
history were brought to the attention of some IEPC participants
(Link:  )Saturday during a workshop about economic injustice
and human trafficking.

Putul (not her real name) is originally from a village in West Bengal,
India. Her bad days began when her father died two years ago.

Her mother remarried a man who was an alcoholic. Putul and her mother moved
to her stepfather’s village. Her stepfather’s drunken brawls often
ended in the sound of him beating Putul and her mother.

Putul’s dream of studying was shattered before she realized what was done
to her. She was rescued from the misery of life by a “sympathetic
aunt” from the neighbourhood. The promises of a better life took her to
Sonagachi – a city known for flesh trade in West Bengal.

Then one day her bedroom door was opened around midnight and an old man
came into the room and physically tortured her because she refused to
surrender to him.

The story of Putul was told by Sanjana Das, of the Church of North India
(Link: http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=f1ed5f8828407f8bec1d ) who was 
one of the
organizers of an IEPC workshop called “Combating Human Trafficking:
Churches’ Role in Tackling Emerging Vulnerabilities”.

It would be easiest to deal with Putul as a statistic, that she is one
among thousands of unnamed children in India who are forced into
prostitution. But she is not a statistic. And like the rest of the
children whose childhoods are denied, she is a human being in need of
love, a home, an education and justice.

Despite this an increasingly growing number of young girls, mostly
children, are added to the flesh trade and migrated from rural to urban
areas. The figure of minor prostitutes in Delhi, India, is as high as
30,000 to 50,000 according to a report of the National Commission for
Women in India.

Human trafficking is not an isolated issue and not limited to the sex
trade. It is the consequence of poverty and discrimination of the
powerless. The strong prey on the weak. It is part of the violence of a
global economic system that dehumanizes people while maximizing profit.

Sanjana Das estimates that 80 percent of the trafficking worldwide is
happening across international boarders. Usually, people from poor
countries are being submitted to modern forms of slavery in rich
countries.

The UN defined human trafficking as “a crime against humanity” that
involves “an act of recruiting, transporting, transferring, harbouring
or receiving a person through a use of force, coercion or other means, for
the purpose of exploiting them.”

The cooperation with partners such as UN Women (Link:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=cda49761677aa86f45ee ) in combating 
human trafficking in India has led
the Church of North India to become a strong actor in the advocacy for
more effective children-friendly legal systems.

Human trafficking is organized crime. The children and young adults taken
from their homes are submitted to sexual exploitation, forced labour,
forced marriage, to fight as child soldiers or serve as forced donors to
organ trafficking. And this is not happening in India alone. Participants
of the IEPC workshop shared examples of advocacy networks in the United
States and Latin America as well.

IEPC website (Link: 
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=2786605d1a5af3f0e336 )

WCC human rights advocacy (Link:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=7424635540c05137f0ad )

IEPC photo galleries (Link:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=cfcef877e680fcdcfc8b )

IEPC videos (Link: http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=150e34d963567ba07c09
)

High resolution photos of the event may be requested free of charge via
photos.oikoumene.org (Link:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=c9b00cd7b7d3de688380 )


The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness 
and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of 
churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 349 Protestant, 
Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 560 million 
Christians in over 110 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman 
Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, 
from the [Lutheran] Church of Norway. Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland.



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