UNITED NATIONS (CNS): A worldwide network of 2,000 Catholic religious sisters marked the 10th anniversary of its efforts to combat human trafficking and slavery on July 29. Speakers from the Rome-based Talitha Kum organisation headlined a United Nations (UN) panel on the eve of the UN’s annual observance of the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. 
 
“Human trafficking is one of the darkest and most revolting realities in the world today, ensnaring 41 million men and women, boys and girls,” Father David Charters, second secretary of the Vatican’s permanent observer mission to the United Nations, said. 
 
He said the international response to the global phenomenon includes three specific targets in the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. They commit the organisation’s members to fight trafficking and sexual exploitation, take immediate action to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking, and end all forms of violence against and torture of children. 
 
Comboni Sister Gabriella Bottani, the international coordinator of Talitha Kum, explained that it is a network of networks established by the International Union of Superiors General to coordinate and strengthen the anti-trafficking work being done by consecrated women in 77 countries on five continents.