The power of care is the only way to counter all forms of exploitation

The 2022 edition – the eighth since the launch of this Day, initiated by Pope Francis in 2015 on the feast of St Josephine Bakhita – proposes to put women at the centre. “It is they, in fact, who are most affected by the violence of trafficking and economic models based on exploitation. At the same time, women have a fundamental and important role in the process of transforming the economy of exploitation into an economy of care”. The theme was chosen in continuity with the previous year’s focus on the connection between the economy and trafficking in persons. (Source: thalitakum.info)

The reflection prepared by the International Coordination for the GMPT opens with a look at current events: the Pandemic has increased the profits and exacerbated the pain of trafficking in persons, especially women and girls:

“Trafficking is one of the deepest wounds inflicted by the current economic system. Wounds that affect all dimensions of life, personal and communal. The pandemic has increased the “business” of trafficking in persons and exacerbated its pain: it has fostered the opportunities and socio-economic mechanisms behind this scourge and exacerbated situations of vulnerability that have affected those most at risk and disproportionately women and girls, who are particularly penalised by the dominant economic model”.