If you drive along Rome’s Via Salaria, Via Palmiro Togliatti, Viale Tor di Quinto or Via Cristoforo Colombo at pretty much any time of the day or night you cannot fail to notice the commercial sex workers: usually, but not always, very young women dressed in little more than their underwear, standing huddled together or alone on the roadside, backside pointing at the passing motorists or legs crossed and arms folded against the cold.

The reaction may be a combination of disapproval, pity, discomfort and guilty curiosity, or just anger at the driver of the car in front who brakes suddenly to get a better look. Often there is an assumption that these prostitutes are there by choice, rather than that they might be victims of the fastest growing criminal activity in the world: human trafficking, defined as the recruitment, transfer or receipt of persons through payment or by coercive or fraudulent means for exploitation. This can take many forms: forced prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, the removal of organs, illegal adoption, drug trafficking and other criminal activities.

Roughly 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year according to the United States government’s 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report. Of these, approximately 80 per cent are female and 50 per cent are children. However experts agree that the official figures only give part of the picture and that the real numbers are actually much higher. Nor do they take into account the millions of people who are forced into slavery in their own country every year.

“Human trafficking is the ugliest side of a capitalistic society that considers human beings as a commodity,” says Amy Elizabeth Roth, public affairs coordinator at the United States embassy to the Holy See, which has made combating the trafficking of persons for sexual exploitation a focal part of its activities in recent years. “It is a living, breathing phenomenon that responds to global social and economic trends.”

However, trafficking must also be seen within the broader context of global human migration and the laws produced to regulate the movement of people around the world. Stricter immigration laws passed in many countries, particularly in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, have forced aspiring migrants to find any way they can, however dangerous and illegal, to reach their country of choice, making them vulnerable to exploitation.

“Thousands” of girls and young women are trafficked into Italy each year for sexual exploitation, according to Roth, who has worked on the issue for over four years. They come from Nigeria, eastern Europe and increasingly from Asia, and the age, she says, is getting lower. “There is now a growing demand for girls as young as 14 or 15 years old.”

Some will have approached a trafficker as the only feasible way of reaching the country; others may have been tricked into surrendering their freedom by family or friends with the promise of a better life in a foreign country. More often than not they will have had absolutely no idea what kind of life they would be leading on arrival in the “promised land”.

Once in Italy the victims are subject to intense physical and emotional abuse, working up to 20 hours a day under the watchful eye of their pimp or madam, or of a fellow forced sex worker. They are deprived of their documents and are required to pay board and lodging as well as rent on the stretch of roadside they work; many are also tied to their traffickers by a debt bond sometimes running to tens of thousands of euro, which it can take many years – and thousands of clients – to redeem. However, due to the stigma still attached to prostitution, the weight of personal or family expectations or fear of the consequences for them or their loved ones if they speak out, many are unable or unwilling to denounce their condition.

Trafficking for sexual exploitation is only the tip of the iceberg – the most visible form of the phenomenon in Italy that also includes forced labour especially in the agricultural sector, begging and the sale of drugs. Up to ten per cent of trafficking victims in Italy are children according to the 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report; they include a growing number of Romanians as a result of the forced closure of orphanages in Romania imposed by the European Union as a condition for entry into the EU in 2007. However the more clandestine nature of these activities and a lower level of public and political awareness mean that figures are hard to come by and the victims more difficult to reach.

If Italian immigration law potentially encourages trafficking by making it extremely difficult for migrants to reach the country by legal means, paradoxically the country also has one of the most enlightened pieces of anti-trafficking legislation in the Europe. “Italian law considers trafficking as a question of human rights violations rather than of illegal immigration,” says Teresa Albano, project manager for the counter-trafficking unit of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Rome. “It goes in the direction of restoring human dignity.”

The cornerstone of the legislation is article 18 of the 1998 immigration law, which gives protection and support to all victims of trafficking who seek help, irrespective of whether they are prepared to report their traffickers or not. Provisions include a six-month renewable residence permit and participation in a rehabilitation programme leading to integration in Italy or repatriation; participants are given secure accommodation and have access to social services, education and job assistance among other things. Material and emotional support is also given to victims who are repatriated. In 2000 the government also activated a toll free number – 800290290 – to answer requests for information or help.

Italy is also trying to prevent and prosecute traffickers under its 2003 Measures Against Trafficking in Persons law, which defines trafficking as a contemporary form of slavery and contemplates penalties of up to 30 years’ imprisonment for offenders. Between October 2006 and January 2007 the government conducted an anti-trafficking crackdown that led to nearly 800 arrests. Most recently in mid-January a court in Naples issued warrants for the arrest of 66 Nigerians suspected of trafficking and related activities.

There are many organisations in Italy providing support and protection especially for victims of sexual exploitation. One of these is the anti-trafficking office of the Italian Union of Superior Majors (USMI), an umbrella organisation for female religious orders. Under the dedicated leadership of Consolata missionary, Sister Eugenia Bonetti, the sisters minister to prostitutes on the streets, inform them of their legal and medical rights, visit illegal immigrants in detention centres to identify victims of trafficking, help them enter rehabilitation programmes and provide shelter to victims and a chance to rebuild their self-esteem. Over the last eight years USMI has given protection to 5,000 victims of sexual exploitation in 110 convents across Italy.

In summer 2007 USMI also opened a centre in southern Nigeria’s Benin City, funded by the Italian Bishops’ Conference, which is dedicated to educating local girls about trafficking and assisting victims on their return home. In addition, last October the Italian union joined forces with religious orders in other countries around the world engaged in similar work to form the International Network of Religious Against Trafficking in Persons (INRATIP), the only existing network of its kind.

Now there are plans to bring male religious orders on board to tackle the demand element of trafficking for sexual exploitation – the clients.

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