Human trafficking is “the new slavery of the 21st Century,” said Sister Eugenia Bonetti, who has coordinated anti-trafficking strategies in Rome and Turin with a team of 200 religious sisters who have opened their homes to young women fleeing captivity.

The modern slavery is far worse because it involves the “emptying of the dignity of the person,” leaving the women with no hope, no life, and a deep sense of guilt, even though they have been forced into prostitution, Sister Bonetti, an international expert in human trafficking, said.

The globalized market for sexual exploitation has made all countries complicit in the trade as either countries of origin, transit or destination. “No country is safe. We are all included,” she said.

The root cause in countries of origin is “utter poverty,” lack of jobs and gender inequality, she said. Traffickers lure women through promises of jobs because they have no means for survival, she said.

Women and children often cross several countries before they reach their country of destination, she said, adding that the huge profits and low risk make everyone from taxi cab drivers, immigration officials, hotel workers, airport security personnel, landlords and corrupt government officials complicit through cash incentives to turn a blind eye to the problem.

The industry is controlled by the Mafia and other forms of organized crime, she noted. The recruitment, movement and exploitation of women might involve different individuals at each stage, said Sister Bonetti.

The root cause in destination countries is the consumer who exploits these women and children for their sexual gratification and sense of power, she said. “People think that because they can pay they can buy the body of a minor human being,” Sister Bonetti said, criticizing the empty values and permissiveness of wealthy countries.

She also described trafficking as a “man problem” because, as women in western countries have become more emancipated, men have resorted to sexual exploitation as a way of maintaining their sense of control. Many of the exploiters of minors are married men, she said.

Sister Bonetti painted a dire picture of Italy. She estimated some 500,000 women and children are trafficked yearly through European countries, with 50,000 to 70,000 ending up in Italy. “The streets in Italy are flooded with minors, very young girls,” she said.

Most are women 14-18 years old, mainly from Romania, West Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

Sister Bonetti said the plight of Nigerian women is often the worst. African women are considered “second class” to those trafficked from Eastern Europe and earn 10-15 Euros for sexual transactions, while their white counterparts earn 25 Euros, she said.

Their problems, she added, are compounded by the use of Voodoo rituals on the girls to build fear and control. Women who had once been trafficked themselves train the girls for their horrific lives on the streets, she said.

It might take more than 4,000 encounters for girls to pay off the 50-75,000 Euro “contracts” they owe the traffickers. In addition, she added, they have to pay for “expenses” such as food, shelter and clothing out of their earnings.

Sister Bonetti told stories of several women who left Nigeria in hopes of finding work that could help support their families back home, noting that most of them traveled in dangerous caravans across the Sahara desert where the heat, thirst and illness were described as “unbearable.”

But some of their stories had happy endings. Through the efforts of religious sisters who took women into their homes, they were able to find a new life, despite their suffering and despair, Sister Bonetti said.

Sister Bonetti and other sisters have regularly gone onto the streets to meet with girls to persuade them that help is available. “We have ways of giving out phone numbers and addresses,” she said, showing a city bus pass that has a help-line phone number on it.

Sister Bonetti said she is not worried about the danger to herself, only to the girls. Because convents so often take in refugee women, the trafficked girls are hidden among them, she said. Those convents, she added, provide safe housing, food and medical care and have helped 5,000 get certificates to stay and work in Italy.

“I never worried about my security,” she said in an interview. “My life has been given totally.”

Sister Bonetti said Catholic religious are in a unique position to help trafficked women and children. “We are present all over the world. There is not a corner of the world where you don’t find sisters,” she said, noting that it is their “prophetic role” to help to defend and protect exploited women and children. She also said they have “a bank account that never goes dry” that is “called divine providence.”

She said sisters in Nigeria have helped some women reunite with families who thought they were dead.

Though she noted it is difficult to provide exact statistics on the extent of the trade, the United Nations has estimated as many as four million are trafficked worldwide into indentured servitude or the slave trade.

According to an Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) training film presented after Sister Bonetti’s talk, human trafficking generates revenue on a par with that of the illegal arms trade, coming second only to the lucrative drug trade.

Representatives from the RCMP’s newly created Human Trafficking National Coordination Centre Immigration and Passport Branch also attended the meeting sponsored by the Canadian Religious Conference (CRC) and PACT Ottawa, a local volunteer committee dedicated to the prevention of trafficking and protection for victims. Also present was Conservative Parliament member Joy Smith (Kildonan–St. Paul, Man.), who has focused on fighting human trafficking in her work on Parliament Hill.

The CRC, which represents 230 congregations of religious men and women in Canada, has made the eradication of human trafficking one of its top priorities. It has advocated awareness on the issue with government and the public. One of its initiatives has been the tour of a play “Lost in Traffic.” It is also working with other groups and nongovernmental organization to raise awareness of the issue. The CRC has more information about human trafficking at its Web site (www.crc-canada.org).