Abstract
Women Religious are involved in very large numbers in direct social action, services, medical care, and aid to communities and individuals. Qualitative and journalistic reports point to significant, but heretofore inexact, numbers of Women Religious engaged in human rights work. The organisations of Women Religious do not tend to carry out and report the results of monitoring and evaluation of their programmes. They rarely commission external auditing, and their work systems are rarely time-bound – or assessed by specific key performance indicators. While not following the practices of charities and aid agencies, anecdotally Women Religious are thought to have significant results and outcomes, achieved at relatively low levels of financial expenditure. Our interest and research questions were sparked by the realisation that globally a large number of Women Religious (Nuns) are involved in anti-slavery/anti-human trafficking work, as well as driving fundamentally feminist, economic equality, and human rights agendas within the wider populations/communities in which they live. Talitha Kum, an umbrella network of Sisters-led networks, has been doing pioneering work to combat human trafficking that is grounded in the long tradition of Catholic women, who are committed to community work. Despite their seeming effectiveness, sisters’ efforts and patterns of operation may be the least understood of all abolitionist strategies. Despite the size and breadth of their work, we know little about the anti-slavery work of Sisters who seem to have a significantly different way of fighting modern slavery in which they try to solve the problem from its inception.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
WOMEN RELIGIOUS, MODERN SLAVERY, HUMAN TRAFFICKING, ADIVASI, NORTH-EAST INDIA
