New FOCUS: Human trafficking: The slavery of the 21st century

The new edition of FOCUS has arrived, the monographic publication of Mumbai Smiles that allows us to delve deeper into the priority topics on which the organization works.

In this case, we focus on human trafficking, which we call the slavery of the 21st century and one of the crimes that moves the largest amount of money in the world, after drug and arms trafficking.

50 Million people live as slaves around the world despite the fact that this practice was abolished and decreed as a crime against humanity by the UN.

The Asia-Pacific region has the highest incidences in terms of the number of victims of trafficking and exploitation. Mumbai Smiles has been operating since 2005 in India. Although it was in 2020 when we created a unit specialized in rescues and a shelter for victims of trafficking. The peaceful fight against this social problem has been part of our DNA since the beginning of our mission, when we managed to prevent the closure of the Karuna orphanage, which was going to leave almost 50 boys and girls in the hands of the mafias, from where some of them had already escaped once. Thus, our actions in Kamathipura, one of the most important red light areas (area of prostitution) in the world, highlighted the global nature of this problem and the need to promote preventive actions in neighboring countries to promote and to coordinate actions. Therefore, we started working in Nepal and Bangladesh. During the second phase, we saw the need to offer a specialized care service in Spain aimed at victims and survivors from the Asian countries in which we operate.

In this text we present the main objectives and data on human trafficking, along with the references of the countries in which we are carrying out our action and our responses against trafficking.

Download from here.