Global slavery and fraternity

“No longer slaves but brothers”: the theme of Pope’s Francis’ message for the XLVIII Day of Peace that will be celebrated January 1st 2015 is drawn from St. Paul’s Epistle to Philemon, in which the Apostle asks his co-worker to welcome Onesimus, formerly Philemon’s slave, now a Christian and, therefore, according to Paul, worthy of being considered a brother. The document, presented in the Vatican on December 10, examines the faces of slavery of yesterday and today, analyses its deep causes, highlighting the common commitment, those of religious Congregations in particular, to counter it, and to work towards a “globalization of solidarity” rather than of indifference.  The faces of slavery of yesterday and today. Despite every person’s right not to be held in a state of slavery or servitude has been recognized by international law as a mandatory provision, “even today millions of people – children, men and women of all ages – are deprived of their liberty and forced to live in conditions comparable to those of slavery”. The thoughts of Pope Francis turn to “the many men and women labourers, including minors, subjugated in different sectors”, to “migrants, who, in their dramatic odyssey, experience hunger, are deprived of freedom, robbed of their possessions, or undergo physical and sexual abuse”, to those “who are detained in at times inhumane conditions, of those among them, who for different social, political and economic reasons, are forced to live clandestinely, to those who, in order to remain within the law, agree to disgraceful living and working conditions, especially in those cases where the laws of a nation create or permit a structural dependency of migrant workers on their employers, as, for example, when the legality of their residency is made dependent on their labour contract”. The Pope does not fail to think of the “persons forced into prostitution, many of whom are minors, as well as male and female sex slaves; women forced into marriage, those sold for arranged marriages and those bequeathed to relatives of their deceased husbands, without any right to give or withhold their consent”, as well as “all those persons, minors and adults alike, who are made objects of trafficking for the sale of organs, for recruitment as soldiers, for begging, for illegal activities such as the production and sale of narcotics, or for disguised forms of cross-border adoption; those kidnapped and held captive by terrorist groups, subjected to their purposes as combatants, or, above all in the case of young girls and women, to be used as sex slaves”. Causes of slavery. Among the causes of the contemporary forms of slavery, listed by the Pope, figure “poverty, underdevelopment and exclusion, especially when combined with a lack of access to education or scarce, even non-existent, employment opportunities. Not infrequently, the victims of human trafficking and slavery are people who look for a way out of a situation of extreme poverty. These networks are skilled in using modern means of communication as a way of luring young men and women in various parts of the world”. Another cause of slavery is corruption, along with armed conflict, criminal activity and terrorism. Eradicating slavery, a common commitment. Often, according to Pope Francis, before phenomena as human trafficking, the illegal trafficking of migrants and other acknowledged or unacknowledged forms of slavery, “one has the impression that they occur within a context of general indifference. Sadly, this is largely true. Yet I would like to mention the enormous and often silent efforts which have been made for many years by religious congregations, especially women’s congregations, to provide support to victims. The activity of religious congregations is carried out in three main areas: in offering assistance to victims, in working for their psychological and educational rehabilitation, and in efforts to reintegrate them into the society where they live or from which they have come”. It is an “immense” task, which of itself, “is not sufficient to end the scourge of the exploitation of human persons”. There is also need for a threefold commitment on the institutional level: to prevention, to victim protection and to the legal prosecution of perpetrators” by States, intergovernmental bodies, and enterprises. Globalizing fraternity. In order to defeat slavery, the Pope invites “those who witness the scourge of contemporary slavery, not to become accomplices to this evil, not to turn away from the sufferings of our brothers and sisters, who are deprived of their freedom and dignity. Instead, may we have the courage to touch the suffering flesh of Christ, revealed in the faces of those countless persons whom he calls “the least of these my brethren”. “This can be clearly seen from the story of Josephine Bakhita, the saint originally from the Darfur region in Sudan”. The Pope’s final appeal is for “all of us to forge a new worldwide solidarity and fraternity capable of giving them new hope and helping them to advance with courage amid the problems of our time and the new horizons which they disclose and which God places in our hands”.