The Major Superiors of Catholic Sisters in Nigeria were touched by the exploitation of Nigerian women and girls to Europe and elsewhere in the world, caught in the web of Human Trafficking, a new form of slavery. They felt a strong need to fight to liberate the daughters of Africa from the shackles of traffickers, the new slave masters. To fight this new form of slavery, they established the Committee for the Support of the Dignity of Women (COSUDOW) in 1999. They also located the office in Benin City in Edo State where most of the trafficked victims in Nigeria came from. Since then the Sisters have been at the forefront of combating Human Trafficking in Nigeria With COSUDOW, the Sisters tackle human trafficking from four fronts: prevention, protection (rehabilitation and reintegration of victims), prosecution of traffickers, and partnership and collaboration with interest groups.
Prevention takes the form of public enlightenment and awareness campaigns against human trafficking in every possible direction – school, and church campaigns, market women mobilization and market campaigns, local government and community mobilization; street and road walks, town hall meetings, and meetings with opinion leaders, advocacy visits to stakeholders and government leaders, Television and Radio documentaries, jingles, social and print media, etc.

Protection of victims of human trafficking takes the form of rescuing, identifying, and profiling the victim, providing shelter for safety and recuperation, counselling for psychological and emotional healing, medical and spiritual care, psychosocial support, family tracing and reunion, economic empowerment for self-reliance and reintegration back to family and society, formal education and referral services for necessary, follow-up services, monitoring, and evaluation, etc.

Prosecution of traffickers is done as a referral or in collaboration with law enforcement agents and with the government agencies designated and empowered to arrest and prosecute traffickers such as the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) and Edo State Taskforce against Human trafficking (ETAHT). Other states are gradually establishing their task force against human trafficking.

Partnership and collaboration: The Sisters partner and collaborate among themselves, with stakeholders and interest groups in the fight against human trafficking both international and national, state and non-state actors such as NGOs and CSOs. It seeks financial help from donors and benefactors both international and local.