Throughout the past few months S6 pupils partaking in the Caritas Award in the parish of St Anthony’s and St Mark’s, Rutherglen, have been working together with Justice & Peace Scotland to pray and spread the word about the problem of human trafficking. As part of our award, we have to show how our faith and values can have a positive impact on our local communities, so we have been facilitating this parish project to raise awareness in our parish about the problems of human trafficking and, through our advocacy actions, make these more known to the wider public. We have had tremendous support already from parishioners who have been willing to help out as much as possible by sharing our online campaign and by attending a holy hour we hosted in the parish to pray for victims of human trafficking. We want to take this message beyond our own community so we hope, whoever is reading this, that you will also be willing to support us.

These last few months have been very eye opening to all of us as a group. Very few of us had previous knowledge on what human trafficking actually was and we have all been working hard to try and share this new information amongst attendees of St Mark’s and St Anthony’s Church. We had a visit from SOHTIS (Survivors of Human Trafficking in Scotland) which was very informative as they provided some clear definitions for us and we found out a lot of statistics around human trafficking in Scotland and the numbers were astonishing. Human trafficking is the acquisition or illegal movement of a person by means of deception or coercion for the purpose of exploitation. This can include forced labour, domestic servitude or being forced to participate in organised crime. You may think that this is something that happens internationally but we found out that over 100,000 people in the UK are trapped in modern slavery and that human trafficking has been identified in every single local authority in Scotland.

If you want to have a look for yourself, visit the SOHTIS website. After this meeting with SOHTIS, we went out to speak to the congregations of St Mark’s and St Anthony’s to introduce them to the topic of human trafficking and appeal for their support with our project. We were delighted with how this went. We prepared our own speeches to deliver at Sunday masses and informed them not only about what we had learned from SOHTIS but also about how our Catholic faith and Catholic Social Teaching require us to stand up against injustices and oppression, which includes responding to the issue of human trafficking which Pope Francis has called “a crime against humanity”. 

Our main focus during all of this work has been on St Josephine Bakhita, a Sudanese woman who was kidnapped and sold into slavery at the age of 7 but who was eventually saved by Catholic nuns and later became a nun herself. As a group we have been very inspired by her story and have felt compelled to share it with so others. We hosted an Advent Holy Hour during which we told the story of St Josephine Bakhita and asked for her intercession for the victims and survivors of human trafficking. This event had a great turnout which really let us see the amount of support we had from our community and how passionate they were to also try and stop human trafficking.

Now, we are calling out to you, the wider Justice & Peace Scotland network, to appeal for your support during this journey. Human trafficking has been flying under the radar everywhere, including Scotland, for years and it is now time to put an end to it. Please visit the SOHTIS website to learn more about human trafficking on Scotland and go to the Unseen UK website to learn how you can report concerns about human trafficking online, through the modern slavery helpline, or through an app on your phone. 

Even if all you can do is just spread the word about this serious human rights issue, it would be very beneficial to those who are currently or have previously been victims of human trafficking. Please pray for victims and survivors that they may find freedom and the support they need to rebuild their lives, and pray for the work of organisations like SOHTIS that they may reach many more people in need of their help. Thank You.