I’ll confess, I don’t usually pay much attention to awareness-raising days which come around once a year to draw our attention to an issue. But this week my attention was drawn to two days which occur side by side: World Day of Social Justice on February 20th and Human Trafficking Awareness Day in Ontario on February 21st. Together, these two days do more than simply call our attention to an issue. They dialogue with each other.
If we use the lens of social justice to examine human trafficking, we are reminded that human trafficking is not just a criminal activity, and we can’t prevent human trafficking simply by prosecuting criminals and raising awareness. Rather, it’s critical to focus on the social, economic and cultural factors which create vulnerabilities to being trafficked: social exclusion, poverty, lack of education and job opportunities, racism, and gender bias, weak mental health and addiction services, to name a few.
These factors highlight a lack of access to human rights. The good news is, this means there are structural changes which would go a long way toward preventing this exploitation: robust social protections (living wage, basic income guarantee, adequate shelter, health care, and access to ongoing education and skills-training), strong labour standards with frequent inspections, and more pathways to permanent residency.
In other words, better access to human rights is the best way to prevent human trafficking --- and many other injustices. All we need is the political will to make it happen.
-Sister Sue Wilson, csj