T. +39 0541 909630

info@apg23.org

Human trafficking for the purpose of prostitution has been compared to the slavery of Africans in terms of the number of victims it creates. It is a global industry, exploiting the flesh of very young girls who have grown up in difficult circumstances and who are seeking a better life. This international illegal trade is extremely well-organised and highly profitable, yielding mind-boggling sums. Today’s sex industry is truly global and to combat this modern slave trade the Community set up the Anti-Human Trafficking Service.

In the early 1990s, Father Benzi launched the sharing in the streets experience in which contact groups meet up with women forced into street prostitution and, once they had established a relationship of trust, offered them a way out in the form of a welcome in a Community home.

We see them every night walking the streets in the poor quarters of our cities.
We call them prostitutes but we know nothing them of them as people, of their girlhood dreams or of their suffering. Our encounters with the hidden suffering of these young women, some of them still little girls, in which their right to womanhood is being trampled underfoot, have convinced us of the urgency of fighting with and for them. The Community was the first association in Italy to do this, welcoming them in and creating homes especially for them where they could recover the dignity denied them.
We must stop hiding this terrible violence behind the screen of “the oldest profession in the world”.

The recovery process we offer guarantees legal and psychological assistance and health care, helping them to untangle all the bureaucratic knots, to learn Italian and providing them with training courses.
There are now twenty of these street units in Italy.
From February 2008 an anti-trafficking free-phone service has been active 24 hours a day available to women forced into prostitution and also to their clients and anyone else wishing to help liberate these modern-day slaves.
Father Oreste Benzi took endless action to tear human-trafficking up by the roots, the most significant of which was a petition bearing 100,000 signatures in favour of legislation to punish clients, generating a draft bill prompted by the public and submitted to the Italian parliament in 2004.

Figures for the Anti-Trafficking Service
(source APG23 2013 Annual Report)

  • 5 emergency reception centres
  • 35 children with their mothers
  • 184 young women welcomed into to Community homes and families and associated facilities (citizenship predominantly Nigerian)
  • 18 street units in 9 regions
  • 8289 contacts, 990 of them new contacts
  • Meetings and demonstrations to sensitise public opinion
  • Not only women: 11 men and 1 transsexual also welcomed in
  • 58 programmes of social reintegration completed, followed by 4 assisted repatriations.

Donate Now to APG23

Latest news
  • The Apg23 recommendations to the ..
    On November 4, Italy, represented in Geneva by a delegation led by the Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, Manlio Di...
    Read more
    11 November 2019
  • Building peace and reconciliation..
    The 21 September 2019 has marked the International Day of Peace, a day established by the General Assembly of the United N...
    Read more
    20 September 2019
  • Solidarity: right or crime?
    The theme of the criminalization of humanitarian actors and members of civil society who show solidarity with migrants and...
    Read more
    16 July 2019
  • Climate Change: it is happening h..
    The Parallel Event held the 26 June 2019 during the 41st Regular Session of the Human Rights Council about the environment...
    Read more
    26 June 2019
  • A Ministry of Peace in every state
    The Geneva Apg23 team launches this proposal: to create a Ministry of Peace in all the nations of the world. An innovative...
    Read more
    09 October 2018
  • Human rights: a new high commissi..
    The 39th Human Rights Council, which takes place from 10 to 28 September 2018, marked the beginning of the mandate in the ...
    Read more
    25 September 2018
  • The proposal of the Ministry of P..
    September 21st - from 1pm to 2.30pm - Palazzo delle Nazioni, Room XXV - Geneva During the 39th Session of the Human Rig...
    Read more
    21 September 2018
  • A proposal to eradicate prostitut..
    The 38th session of the Human Rights Council takes place in Geneva these days  and our office has promoted  various activi...
    Read more
    02 July 2018
  • International Solidarity: a right..
    On Thursday, June 8th 2017, the international office of APG23, in collaboration with the Catholic Working Group on the Rig...
    Read more
    28 June 2017
  • We say stop to maternal mortality
    During the 34th session of the Human Rights Council a panel was held the 9th of march, 2017 among a group of experts and d...
    Read more
    29 March 2017
Iscriviti alla Newsletter IOCON
register
Desidero ricevere vostre comunicazioni e richieste personalizzate via email. Informativa Privacy

Loading…