Trafficking in Human Beings!
Dr. Michel E. Abs
Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches
When you hear this phrase, you rush to check your calendar thinking that perhaps you misidentified what era you are in.
Are we really in the twenty-first century after the time of the Incarnate?
Are we in a time of freedoms, human rights, knowledge, discoveries, and inventions that humanity is proud of?
It is truly a paradox that one day of the year, 30 July, is dedicated to be The International Day against Trafficking in Persons.
On the United Nations website dedicated to combating this crime, you will be shocked by the facts and data mentioned therein.
The site considers that "trafficking in persons is a serious crime and a flagrant violation of human rights" and is very widespread as it "affects thousands of men, women and children who fall prey to the traffickers, both in their countries as well as abroad". The site also considers that for every human trafficking process, there are three countries involved: the country of origin, the last transit point, and lastly the country of destination for the victims.
As for the suffering of "traffickees", the available data shows that 50 percent of them are exploited for sexual purposes, while 38 percent are exploited in forced labor. The site adds that women victims are the main targets. Women make up 46 percent and girls 19 percent of all victims of human trafficking. This phenomenon does not spare children, as they constitute a third of the victims. The site adds that the percentage of children has tripled among the victims of trafficking discovered, while the percentage of boys has increased five times over the past fifteen years.
The scene is tragic!
The international community has produced a protocol aimed at preventing human trafficking and punishing traffickers. Article 3, paragraph (a) in it defines trafficking in persons in its various forms, including:
1- Recruitment, transportation, transfer or harboring of persons targeted by exploitation
2- Detention of persons by threat, use of force, or any other form of coercion, kidnapping, fraud, deception or extortion
3- Abusing power, exploiting positions of weakness, or giving sums of money or benefits out of control over another person for the purpose of exploitation
It also includes minimal exploitation:
1- Exploitation of persons in prostitution networks and other forms of sexual exploitation
2- Free labor, forced or servant labor, slavery or practices similar to slavery
3- Enslavement of persons for the purpose of physical use and removal of organs
What sick psyche, imbued with material greed, can perform such actions against a weak human being who needs warmth and protection the most?
What deadly economic or political system allows the spread of such diseases among humans?
What human culture makes it possible for a human being to objectify another human being and use him for humanly condemned and legally punished ends?
When misery leads a human being to become a prey to such practices, and when greed reaches a person to the extent that another human being treats him as a thing, stripping him of his humanity, then for sure humanity has approached the limits of primitivism and the universe has become like a jungle in which predators roam without controls or deterrents.
The Incarnate came to this world, breaking the chains and carrying whips in the face of the temple merchants, and declaring a new beginning for humanity, which we call the time of love!
Love cannot coexist with the enslavement of human beings and their subjugation as commodities, a concession to the one whose heart is empty of love!
Love cannot coexist with the fact that human beings are not considered as equal before the Creator and before each other, cooperating in the conduct of their life affairs with whatever experience and know-how they are endowed with.
How can humanity, which has come to know the Truth, the Truth has set it free, coexist with those who traffic in human beings and bring man back to times we thought are gone and will not return?
A society, inspired by the belief in the Incarnate and embodied in His values, is called to wage a fierce war on slavery and serfdom as well as on everything related to both.
The path of Restoring Human Dignity, which we have just launched in our organization, targets all forms of social phenomena and practices that kill the soul before the body, so that man voluntarily is turned into a “commodity” available to every greedy person with no limits to his gratification. Field research, jointly backed by awareness sessions and seminars on human dignity, must do their work in a society that is destined to enter a time of severe slavery the features of which we have observed appearing among us
In his historical epic “Al-Mawakeb”, the son of the cedars, Gibran Khalil Gibran, states that “the killer of the body is killed by his action, and the killer of the soul is unknown among humans.” Slavery, in its modern form, human trafficking, is first and foremost the killing of the soul. After that, killing the body becomes a matter of details.
A sound society imbued with love refuses to harbor such a path in its bosom.