Leela Ramdeen

Chair, CC­SJ & Di­rec­tor, CRE­DI

"What to do? What to do?" cried my friend in frus­tra­tion af­ter read­ing about the 19 young Venezue­lan women, be­tween 15 and 19 years old, who were res­cued fol­low­ing po­lice op­er­a­tions in west Trinidad. The me­dia re­port­ed that po­lice have cracked a ma­jor drug and pros­ti­tu­tion ring.

Pope Fran­cis has stat­ed that: "Hu­man traf­fick­ing is an aber­rant plague and a mod­ern form of slav­ery." Sad­ly, this mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar glob­al plague shows no signs of slow­ing down. My plea goes out to­day to those who are en­rich­ing these crim­i­nals. Do you ever stop to think about the ef­fects of your ac­tions on the vic­tims, on their fam­i­lies, and on the wider com­mu­ni­ty? Pray for a con­ver­sion of heart so that you will de­sist from such ac­tion which can af­fect your abil­i­ty to form lov­ing, car­ing re­la­tion­ships.

Sarah Godoy, an an­ti-traf­fick­ing re­searcher and pro­fes­sor at UCLA, has right­ly said that we can­not end sex traf­fick­ing with­out ad­dress­ing de­mand. She says both traf­fick­ers and sex pur­chasers are "equal­ly cul­pa­ble. Pub­lic dis­course con­demn­ing com­mer­cial sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion has large­ly fo­cused on traf­fick­ers, with sig­nif­i­cant­ly less at­ten­tion and ac­count­abil­i­ty placed on the con­duct of sex pur­chasers...Sex pur­chasers...are rarely pe­nalised or even ad­dressed as ex­ploita­tive, as ev­i­denced by the count­less eu­phemisms, like 'Johns' and 'hob­by­ist,' that re­in­force an in­dif­fer­ence—and al­most benev­o­lence—to their be­hav­iours...If we as a so­ci­ety tru­ly de­sire to erad­i­cate com­mer­cial sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion, then we must ex­plore and im­ple­ment ef­fec­tive ways to dis­man­tle all fronts—in­clud­ing sex pur­chas­er’s ac­tiv­i­ties that en­cour­age and as­sist in ex­ploita­tion".

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice on Drugs and Crime Glob­al Re­port on Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons: “Every coun­try in the world is af­fect­ed by hu­man traf­fick­ing...Chil­dren make up al­most a third of all hu­man traf­fick­ing vic­tims world­wide, Ad­di­tion­al­ly, women and girls com­prise 71 per cent of hu­man traf­fick­ing vic­tims."

Have we in T&T bought in­to the throw­away cul­ture that is so preva­lent in our world to­day? Are those who are traf­ficked "prod­ucts" to be dis­card­ed with­out any con­cern for their in­her­ent dig­ni­ty? In their ar­ti­cle en­ti­tled: The Prob­lem of De­mand in Com­bat­ing Sex Traf­fick­ing, Lin­da Smith and Saman­tha Healy Var­daman state:

"De­mand is the push fac­tor in the crim­i­nal busi­ness of sex traf­fick­ing...A cul­ture of tol­er­ance sur­rounds the mar­ket­place of com­mer­cial sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion. The cul­ture of tol­er­ance is de­rived from a coun­try’s his­to­ry, eth­nic­i­ty, re­li­gious prac­tice, lan­guage, po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sys­tem, and oth­er in­flu­ences. Cul­tures of tol­er­ance dif­fer from coun­try to coun­try, and some­times vary with­in coun­tries or even cities, but the essence is the same: so­ci­etal ac­cep­tance backed by po­lit­i­cal tol­er­ance. Mar­ket­places of com­mer­cial sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion re­quire some lev­el of tol­er­ance with­in the com­mu­ni­ty in or­der to ex­ist...In sex­u­al­ly charged so­ci­eties that both en­cour­age promis­cu­ity and cov­et the in­no­cence of youth, it fol­lows that the de­mand for young vic­tims will rise to meet the cul­tur­al glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of un­der­age sex­u­al­i­ty."

The 19 girls who were res­cued were be­tween 15 to 19 years old. In­ter­est­ing­ly, Min­is­ter Young has said: "As a re­sult of what took place yes­ter­day, there has been a flood of in­for­ma­tion from all over the coun­try to the au­thor­i­ties with hu­man traf­fick­ing." If we all "rage" for jus­tice, per­haps we will take ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion—to­geth­er. T&T is a des­ti­na­tion, tran­sit, and source coun­try for adults and chil­dren sub­ject­ed to sex traf­fick­ing. The Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Act, The Sex­u­al Of­fences Act, the Chil­dren's Act and oth­er leg­is­la­tion on their own will not solve our prob­lem un­less we step up and be­come ad­vo­cates for the vic­tims of hu­man traf­fick­ing eg, call the Counter-Traf­fick­ing Unit's hot­line. As is stat­ed on the Unit's Face­book Page: "You may be a vic­tim's on­ly chance for help. If you know of or sus­pect hu­man traf­fick­ing, call the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit hot­line at 800-4288...All calls are toll free and anony­mous." Their Face­book Page in­cludes use­ful tips/signs to look for in our com­mu­ni­ties with re­gard to traf­fick­ing.

Pope Fran­cis right­ly says that hu­man traf­fick­ing is "an open wound on the body of hu­man­i­ty…a crime against hu­man­i­ty ...it touch­es the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in so­ci­ety: women and young girls, chil­dren, the dis­abled, the poor, who­ev­er comes from sit­u­a­tions of fa­mil­ial or so­cial dis­in­te­gra­tion. We need a com­mon re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and a stronger po­lit­i­cal will to suc­ceed on this front...ar­rest­ing the traf­fick­ers is a du­ty of jus­tice. But the true so­lu­tion is the con­ver­sion of hearts, cut­ting off the de­mand and dry­ing up the mar­ket."

Let's put our heads to­geth­er to rid our com­mu­ni­ties of this grave hu­man rights vi­o­la­tion.