Sr. Jecinter Antoinette Okoth, FSSA
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| Fr. Paul Mung’athia Igweta, Coordinator for Integral Human Development Department at AMECEA Secretariat |
Exploitation of vulnerable persons through coercion, deception or other means was a key highlight during the three-day workshop in Zambia’s capital Lusaka, where Coordinators from the departments of Promoting Integral Human Development and Social Communications within the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa (AMECEA) region have been asked to take responsibility and address human trafficking which tends to be a “consequence of human failure.”
Discussing the “role of the Church in mitigating the plight of migrants and trafficked persons,” Coordinator for Integral Human Development Department at AMECEA Secretariat Fr. Paul Mung’athia Igweta said, “We need to respond to human trafficking as a Church to improve the conditions of our people.”
Fr. Igweta was speaking on behalf of Fr. Ikenna Ikechi, the in change of African Coordination Team in Rome for migrants and refugees specifically the Anglophone countries. He disclosed that “Forced migration and situations of disequilibrium are corollaries of disobedience, sin and crime,” and at the same time migrants and trafficked persons “are inexorably exposed to vulnerabilities, fear, violent exploitations, abuses of all kinds & ultimately death.”
While addressing dozens of participants drawn from five AMECEA conferences, the diocesan clergy from Kenya’s Meru Diocese acknowledged that some people fall victim of trafficking when searching for ways to improve their living standards.
“Some people move to other countries imagining there are better ways of living in those countries, and they continue experiencing terrifying violence like criminal and sex abuses hence some of them become victims of human trafficking,” Fr. Igweta noted.
Quoting Pope Francis that human trafficking is an act that has become “an atrocious scourge, an aberrant plague and a wound in the body of contemporary society," Fr. Igweta said “this is the highest human enslavement that is happening currently in our modern society.”
He challenged the Conferences’ Coordinators to fight human trafficking saying, “This is the most important social responsibility for us in our time and there is need to use radical approach and campaign against it.” Besides, “from the Social Teaching of the Church, we have a duty to address the sufferings of the people by bringing it to the attention of our Bishops and the Church governance system to address this plight of the suffering.”
As a resolution, he proposed putting in place some measures for the Church to help address this menace which is a global phenomenon.
“This can be done by sensitizing our communities and using our forums as a Church to have capacity building for our people, so they can understand more about human trafficking as a scourge in our time,” Fr. Igweta who has worked in that capacity at the AMECEA Secretariat for two years said referring to measures that can be applied to address human trafficking in the society.
He added, “We need pastoral orientation on human trafficking.We need to mobilize our institutions and our people. We need as a Church to ensure that in our institutions we fight this evil in the society. We need to make it an issue to every other governance organ that needs to be confronted from Conference, Diocese, parishes point of it and also including where people think there is no human trafficking happening.”
While referring to Pope Francis who said that human trafficking is “a global phenomenon that exceeds the competence of any one community or country,” Fr Paul emphasized the importance of collective efforts saying, “We need to booster cooperation among ourselves, providing support to survivors who are highly depressed and need counselling and also find other ways on how we can give support such to trafficked persons and promoting reintegration.”
“As we cooperate to fight this evil, we need to know that human life is sacred from conception to natural death and so every human person is equal in dignity to every other person. It’s not just about the migrants as such but about the human person,” he concluded.