” “"The atrocity of the trade of human beings has recently escalated; enslaved people depend in everything and for everything on criminals who get hold of women and children": this powerful denunciation, taking its cue from the Pope’s message for the World Migrant and Refugee Day, has been repeated today by cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino, president of the Papal Council of the Pastoral for Migrants and Travellers. Card. Martino, talking to the journalists in the pressroom of the Vatican, spoke of the "isolation of migrant women" and the fact they "fall prey of the trade of human beings and prostitution". "Unfortunately, today this trade is, across the world, a much more serious phenomenon than the slaves taken from Africa", stated card. Martino, who also mentioned the unfortunate tragedies of "children soldiers, children slave to prostitution". "In a world that calls itself free and proclaims the respect of human rights", he added, the existence of forms of slavery in which rights "are not respected and are trampled on" "is absurd". Card. Martino exhorted the states to respect "the laws against slavery that already exist", but the enforcement of which "is often slow, inconsistent". "We ask he concluded that these crimes be strictly punished".” “
