So Everyone Might Have a Home

by Jonathan Crooms

A group of 16 students and their trip leader Kristin Fox-Trautman from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn., attended a two-day seminar on global homelessness at the Presbyterian U.N. Office on January 3-4, 2007.

The goal of the seminar was to learn about the work of the U.N. and churches on global homelessness, explore the topic in the context of faith and become better equipped to address homelessness in their local community.

Their visit included a tour of the U.N., a series of talks by the Rev. Chris Ferguson of the World Council of Churches, Carol Smolenski of End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT) and Gail Maynor of Partnership for the Homeless, as well as group discussion and reflection.

The topic of the seminar was timely, given a recent overture on the trafficking of children submitted by the Synod of the Northeast to the 217th General Assembly meeting in Birmingham, Ala. The Rhodes students defined home as a place that is safe and familiar and where they felt a sense of community. However, many children throughout the world, including the northeast United States, do not experience that notion of home. Each year, two million children are victims of sexual exploitation and 1.2 million children are trafficked, which is two-and-half the times the population of the city of New Orleans. The international demand for children in the sex trade is high because of the belief that children are less likely to be infected with HIV/AIDS.

To address this form of homelessness, the overture condemned international trafficking and the sexual exploitation of children and called on the national Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to take a series of actions to raise awareness about and address the issue. Yet, much remains to be done politically in order to halt the dangerous trade. One hundred ninety-two of the one hundred ninety-four member states of the U.N. have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the only exceptions being Somalia and the U.S. Only three U.S. companies have signed the "Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Commercial Exploitation in Travel and Tourism," yet an estimated one-fourth of international child sex tourists are Americans. In addition, the 1994 Crime Bill (the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act) makes it illegal for a U.S. citizen to travel overseas to engage in sexual acts with a minor, but few Americans know of its existence and it is not strongly enforced.

The seminar concluded with a worship service in the interfaith Tillman Chapel of the Church Center for the U.N. As the Rhodes students prepared to depart, Presbyterian Representative to the U.N. Joel Hanisek charged the group: "Welcome one another as Christ welcomed you, and go in peace to love and serve the Lord."