Background

When innocence becomes a commodity that can be bought, sold, and auctioned, it's not just freedom that's threatened; it is childhood lost. Millions of children in India face this reality, for whom the norm should be the right to safety and education. While legislative bodies exist, it remains elusive to ground truth, creating a devastating gap between policy and implementation. The International Labor Organisation records that approximately 10 million children are engaged in child labor. Reports from the National Crime Records Bureau documented over 3000 cases of child trafficking in 2022 alone, with an alarming upward trend over the past five years, and these statistics only scratch the surface as the widespread underreporting masks the true magnitude of the crisis.

Multiple organisations are trying to address the crisis at various levels; nevertheless, existing trauma and systemic reintegration barriers subject rescued children to a wide variety of risks, deteriorating their long-term well-being. The ongoing crisis of exploitation and rehabilitation failure creates a particularly difficult knot to untie. Children who have endured trafficking struggle profoundly to reenter formal education systems, forcing them to live a life of perpetual economic vulnerability and choose working for minimum wage over education.

The project Fighting for Futures arises from the need for comprehensive protection frameworks that can address these critical gaps and solve the problem through combining immediate intervention with long-term sustainable rehabilitation. It is our collective responsibility to resist fragmented support systems and create holistic, multidimensional ecosystems that ensure education support, psychological help, and full community integration of the children affected by trafficking and labor exploitation.

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