More than 100 world leaders choked midtown New York traffic this week as barricades went up, pedestrians seethed and police sirens wailed around midtown. Officials at the United Nations can share stats on every trend, crisis or demographic in the world, but even these professional statisticians can only guess at the number of diplomats and assorted hangers-on and staff who descend on Manhattan each September for the U.N. General Assembly.

It is fair to say the city will be hosting many thousands of extra visitors for this hectic week of high-level meetings and side events that accompany each general assembly—each pursuing a specific diplomatic, economic or civic bullet point that propelled a journey all the way to New York. Among them there are at least two women religious in town not for the meetings or the sights or the chance to rub elbows with global movers and shakers.

They have come to bring as much attention as they can to a persisting problem that has been the focus of their ministries in their respective homelands. Gertrude Elelegu, S.S.L., of Nigeria and Sarah Puls, S.G.S., of Australia have devoted years to mitigating the global scourge of human trafficking and restoring the people traumatized by their experiences in this shadow world.

According to U.N. sources, some 50 million people around the world are caught up in human trafficking and various forms of contemporary enslavement. More than 60 percent of them are women and children. A third of all cross-border human trafficking flows involve citizens of Africa, the U.N. reports, “where the impact of crises has been particularly stark, and where there are more people at risk than anywhere else.”

Sister Gertrude heads the Bakhita Empowerment Center, a safehouse in Lagos, Nigeria, for people recovering from their trafficking experiences. She leads a team of Sisters of St. Louis focused on rehabilitating survivors of trafficking and raising community awareness about the threat Nigerian young people face because of traffickers.

She prefers to not to call the women who come to Bakhita victims or survivors of human trafficking, words she feels only contributes to the violence they have experienced. “We call them treasures to let them know that they are treasured,” she says, that “they have value; they still have their dignity.”

At Bakhita, the women who have found their way home after escaping traffickers or “employers” in other countries are offered a safe space for personal recovery, training and education toward new jobs. For many, the respite at Bakhita offers a chance for reconciliation with family and restoration to their communities.

Many of the treasures she works with, like many thousands who become entrapped by human traffickers, were beguiled by false promises of well-paying jobs and better lives outside of Nigeria. What they found instead was a modern form of enslavement under brutal working conditions or in the worst instances forced labor in the sex trade.

Traffickers “make a lot of promises to them,” Sister Gertrude explains, visiting America’s office on Sept. 24. “Maybe if some of them are skilled persons or they have entrepreneurial skills, [traffickers] exploit that and tell them that if they use [those skills] outside their country, let’s say in Europe, they will make better money.” “In that situation, they want to raise the family’s economic standards, and so they fall prey. And when they get out there, they find out that it is not as they have been told, and the story is different.”

Sister Gertrude describes human trafficking as a crime that grows out of the desperation many experience in Nigeria and other nations struggling with poorly performing economies, few educational or employment opportunities and difficult social conditions.

Poverty is at the root of this phenomenon of exploitation and violence, the sisters say.

Sister Sarah leads Australian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking in Humans. Her organization has been engaged in capacity building efforts among Pacific Island Nations, she says.

“There are very few opportunities for employment and with climate change impacting across the Pacific, people are looking for opportunities in other places,” Sister Sarah says.

People have the right to migrate to escape circumstances of poverty or a paucity of opportunity, she says, but in doing so “the more vulnerable they are because of poverty, the more likely they are to take risks, to take up opportunities that maybe are unclear or and turn out to not be real or leave them in very vulnerable situations.”

Last year’s vast aid cuts to foreign assistance programs among big donor nations like the United States and the United Kingdom are joining the economic forces pushing people into trafficking, she reports. The cuts have disrupted not only anti-poverty programs but public awareness campaigns meant to alert potential victims of trafficking to the risks they face.

She is hoping for a revival of donor assistance and public support for ongoing anti-trafficking efforts. “Governments can do something” to address trafficking, Sister Sarah says, “and governments with their people can do a lot.”

Lora Ricca is a program officer working with the Catholic Sisters Initiative of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, a primary funder of a network of more than 700,000 Catholic sisters engaged around the world against human trafficking and in other justice and humanitarian assistance campaigns. She explains the reach of contemporary traffickers is not limited to the developing world.

Social media, used by young people from all economic classes and every country around the world, has made any vulnerable person a potential target. She adds that it is not always a stranger that delivers someone into trafficking, it is sometimes a family member.

Much of the discussion during the current general assembly revolves around the emerging threats and opportunities of artificial intelligence. Sister Sarah points out at A.I. has been put to work by human traffickers as well.

Contemporary traffickers track potential targets on social media. That had been a painstaking process that demanded hours of effort. With A.I. assistance now, Ms. Ricca believes traffickers can locate and reach out to potential victims within minutes. Soon traffickers will be able to identify vulnerable men, women and children within seconds.

Human trafficking is one aspect of modern enslavement, but there are many other forms of worker exploitation taking place across the affluent world, Sister Sarah says. Catholic consumers, employers and institutions “all have a part to play” in combating that.

“A university might do great work in its own procurement, but then they subcontract out the cleaning of the university.
And they have very little insight into who those workers are and how they’re treated.”

“Government can’t do it alone,” Sister Sarah says. “The federal police can’t do it alone. Faith actors can’t do it alone.

“We all have to work together and collaborate, and I think as the world gets more complex, sometimes we shut down that collaboration.”

Sister Sarah finds herself somewhat amazed to be in New York and invited to address a roomful of specialists in economic development and humanitarian relief gathered for a U.N.G.A. side event hosted by Devex, a media platform covering the international humanitarian aid and development sectors. It is not the first time she has been in discussion with the development pros and she thinks Catholic sisters have some wisdom to share with them.

“One of the things that I’m experiencing this week is there’s a bit of a disconnect between some of the conversations we’re in and what life is really like on the ground,” she says.

“It’s a great opportunity to be here to speak with people who are kind of high level thinkers and actors in their organizations and in the private sector and [government] to bring the voice of the people who are really impacted by the decisions that are being made here,” Sister Sarah says.

“Human trafficking is one example, but sisters across the world work in a lot of places where they’re on the ground walking day by day with the people. Here in the aid space, people say, ‘Oh, we’ll come do a project.’” The notion prompts a small smile.

“It’s lovely that people think well of the sisters, but actually the thing that’s important is helping people to realize that engaging with those grassroots communities is where the real impact can happen, that when outside actors come into communities, they don’t understand the needs, they don’t have the trust of the community.”

She suggests development professionals consider teaming up with Catholic sisters, people who are “committed parts of the community and know about the community’s needs.”

“Sisters are there before the project comes and we’re there after the project leaves, so they can be really effective actors in that space,” she says.

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The Weekly Dispatch takes a deep dive into breaking events and issues of significance around our world and our nation today, providing the background readers need to make better sense of the headlines speeding past each week. Last time: “Interview: Bishop Olson on the ‘racist and sinful rhetoric’ of a Texas politician.”

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Kevin Clarke is America’s chief correspondent and the author of Oscar Romero: Love Must Win Out (Liturgical Press).