University of Notre Dame Australia lecturer Elsa Cornejo is about to delve into the underworld of human trafficking in the Philippines, learning how victims can be empowered to lift themselves out of their situation.
By Anthony Barich
Miss Cornejo, 29, was regional director of Caritas in WA for three months before accepting an Australian Postgraduate Award scholarship to undertake a PhD through Curtin University, whereby she will get up to 20 women who have been the victims of human trafficking to photograph what it means to be a woman in the Philippines.Having documented their experiences in the poorest areas of the Philippines, the women will then meet Miss Cornejo again to analyse the photos in a social, political, economic and cultural context to raise awareness in them of how and why they are in the situation so they can claw their way out.
“This is the first step to social change and transformation,” said Miss Cornejo, who also lectures and tutors in behavioural science and social justice at UNDA in Fremantle.
Miss Cornejo migrated to Australia as a refugee as part of a humanitarian program from war-torn El Salvador, where up to 90 per cent of the population is Catholic and was being persecuted.
She became passionate about human rights when she returned to San Jose, one of the poorest areas of El Salvador, in 2001, and lived with the Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition. She was shocked at the extreme poverty the locals experience.
Returning to study theology and social justice at UNDA, she visited Cambodia as part of a Caritas-UNDA joint project, where a girl in a local village told how she had been coaxed into leaving her family to earn money and be educated further, only to be taken straight to a brothel where she was raped and abused.
She was then shipped to Thailand as a sex slave, where she contracted HIV/AIDS, before being caught by police and deported back to Cambodia, where she was ostracised by her village as the locals knew little of AIDS.
“Her story touched me,” Miss Cornejo said, adding that she pondered whether someone could regain their dignity after “losing their humanity”. Flowing on from this inspiration, her PhD in the Philippines will focus on helping empower women to integrate back into society.
“In the 20th century, people have realised how profitable trafficking humans is – it’s easier than guns or drugs,” she said.
The Philippines, she adds, is one of the hotbeds for human trafficking, especially in garment industries, where people work in sweatshops in slave-like conditions.
The problem is exacerbated as villagers, especially women, are attracted to leave for the city or other countries to earn more money for the benefit of their families.
Miss Cornejo will write columns for The Record on her experiences when she arrives in the Philippines in September.