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The Ambas­sador then con­tin­ued by explain­ing how con­tem­po­rary slav­ery affects mil­lions of peo­ple in dif­fer­ent forms—including through organ theft, forced labor in a vari­ety of indus­tries, the sale and abduc­tion of chil­dren, and through sex­u­al slav­ery of both chil­dren and adults. These crimes gen­er­ate more than $150 bil­lion in prof­its, serv­ing as an incen­tive for crim­i­nals. The Ambas­sador con­tex­tu­al­ized the mag­ni­tude of human traf­fick­ing by com­par­ing the prof­its to the eco­nom­ic out­put of Por­tu­gal and by com­par­ing the num­ber of peo­ple involved to the pop­u­la­tion of Spain. The also Ambas­sador dis­cussed how approx­i­mate­ly 71% of vic­tims of con­tem­po­rary slav­ery are women and girls. Fur­ther­more, Pro­fes­sor Veuthey quot­ed H.H. Pope Fran­cis on the caus­es of human traf­fick­ing, name­ly pro­duc­ers’ desire for end­less prof­its and our con­sumer cul­ture where waste is rampant.

 

Last­ly, the Ambas­sador of the Order of Mal­ta informed the audi­ence of the Order’s work to com­bat and pre­vent human traf­fick­ing. This includes the Order’s work sup­port­ing a shel­ter for women vic­tims in Nige­ria, pro­vid­ing mate­r­i­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal assis­tance to vic­tims and sur­vivors, wel­com­ing refugees at the bor­ders, sup­port­ing a pre­ven­tion cam­paign for Ukrain­ian women and chil­dren, col­lab­o­rat­ing with reli­gious con­gre­ga­tions in the field, cre­at­ing free online cours­es and sem­i­nars with inter­na­tion­al experts to increase aware­ness of this plague, and train­ing and edu­cat­ing peo­ple on how to bet­ter pre­vent and com­bat human traf­fick­ing. The Ambas­sador empha­sized the impor­tance of train­ing for gov­ern­ments and civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions to ade­quate­ly address and fight against human trafficking.

 

The Con­cert was fol­lowed by a recep­tion where we received pos­i­tive feedback.