6 November 2006

Counter Trafficking Training for Religious Personnel, November 6, 2006

We at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See are focused on combating the scourge of trafficking in human beings. We work actively to enhance awareness of this problem and to prevent and deter it through partnerships with faith-based organizations and with international organizations already committed to anti-trafficking work. For a number of years, we have been privileged to work with the Rome office of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and with the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) to coordinate a program to train nuns in anti-trafficking strategies and skills. The United States, through the Department of State's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, is proud to fund this groundbreaking program that has already proven its success.

Most recently, nearly 40 nuns from Portuguese speaking countries were given intensive training in Lisbon by IOM in a bid to strengthen their ability to help victims of human trafficking. The nuns, from Angola, Brazil, Guinea Bissau, S. Tomé and Príncipe, Cape Verde, Mozambique and Portugal, received general information on human trafficking with a focus on the social implications of human trafficking, criminal networks and their recruitment methods, how to empower victims and how to protect staff involved in assistance programs from psychological burn-out.

This training provided by IOM tutors, co-sponsored by Portugal's High Commissioner for Immigration and Ethnic Minorities (ACIME) and carried out in collaboration with the International Union of Superiors General and with the active support of the US embassy to the Holy See, provided the nuns with the tools and information necessary to provide assistance to potential victims of trafficking.
With Portuguese spoken by more than 220 million across the world, the training meant greater anti-trafficking outreach by Catholic Church personnel in Portuguese speaking countries and the creation or strengthening of an existing network of assistance for victims of trafficking at regional levels.

In September, counter-trafficking experts carried out training for 30 Catholic nuns in Brazil as part of the same program, one of several initiatives supported by UISG and the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See and carried out by IOM involving the training of religious personnel as part of an overall collaborative strategy to involve faith-based organizations and Catholic Church personnel in combating human trafficking.

Over the past three years, as a result of ongoing U.S. funding, IOM has also trained about 1500 religious personnel in Albania, the Dominican Republic, Italy, Moldova, Nigeria, Romania, Thailand and Ukraine. Next year the program expands to the Philippines and others countries of destination and origin for the victims of trafficking.

Participants to the Counter Trafficking Training for Religious Personnel in Sao Paulo

Participants to the Counter Trafficking Training for Religious Personnel in Lisbon