The Bitter Taste of Human Trafficking

People are not for sale

I’m struck again by the stark contrast between the safe world that I inhabit and the world of physical and emotional abuse, fear and torture experienced by human trafficking victims.

Over recent weeks, my son has put together his CV, listing his strengths, background and aspirations—and he’s sent it off to a company he’d like to work for. These aren’t easy times for school leavers seeking employment in New Zealand, but the process of putting together a CV has been an affirming one for my son. It’s been an opportunity to celebrate his personality, skills and potential, and I feel hopeful about his future.

In another part of the world, another mum is just as hopeful about her child’s prospects. When someone approaches her with the offer of money up front for her struggling household and a good job for her son or daughter, she too celebrates. She wants to believe that the promises made are true: that her son will work in a shop, or that her daughter will earn good money as a domestic. But instead, her son may be put to work as a slave on a cocoa farm on the Ivory Coast, or her daughter may be trafficked to service countless men in a European brothel. And that mother may never see her offspring again.

Most trafficked people are aged 18-24; the same age our children move into full-time work or continue into tertiary study in New Zealand. We parents talk our children up to secure these opportunities. In a way, we help ‘sell them’, I suppose. But spare a thought for parents trapped in such desperate poverty that they literally do sell their children, or have them stolen from them. Consider those children who willingly ‘choose’ servitude because there is no other option available.

But let’s do more than ‘spare a thought’! Let’s take action to prevent the sale of people, to protect those who are trafficked, and to require nations to prosecute those who commit this abhorrent crime against humanity.

Major Christina Tyson

Bible Verse

Zechariah 7:9-10 - New International Version
‘This is what the LORD Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor …’

Hakarāia 7:9
‘Ko te kupu tēnei a Ihowā o ngā mano, e mea ana, Kia pono te whakarite o te whakawā, kia puta te aroha me te tohu tangata ki tōna tuakana, ki tōna teina.’