The Missing
Ones...
Poverty makes them visible to
traffickers and invisible to justice.
Click on these buttons to see what your support could do.
£1,200 would train 200 officials to identify and prevent trafficking
£3,000 would allow 27 trafficked children to be rescued and safely returned home
£5,000 would provide community-led care, rehabilitation and protection for trafficking survivors for an entire year
Anita’s Story
We’ll call her Anita. To the visiting tourists, she looks like just one more orphan at the school; a child who clearly needs their help.
But, when the tourists leave, seven-year-old Anita isn’t taken to a classroom. She’s taken to a dark and cramped space out of sight, where she and the other children are forced to live. There are no photo opportunities here, little food and no schooling. There’s also no contact with the outside world; at least until the next batch of travellers arrive, along with their donations — each believing they are helping orphans receive shelter and education.
Except, Anita is not an orphan at all. She has a family who loves her. Her parents were promised that she would be cared for and educated in Kathmandu. But, just like the tourists, they were lied to.
Anita is one of thousands of children in Nepal who has been trafficked into an underground industry known as “orphanage tourism.” Families struggling with unimaginable poverty, hoping for a better life for their children, are manipulated into sending them to hostels in the city. These hostels are a front — illegal institutions run by traffickers. There, children are abused, kept in terrible conditions and forced to pose as orphans to exploit the goodwill of well-meaning but misinformed visitors.
We’ve changed Anita’s name to protect her identity. Even though her name might not be real, her terrifying story is. Fortunately, Anita was rescued by our partner project in Nepal. Today, she is safe, reunited with her family and even back in school. She is no longer one of the missing ones — but many others still are.
The Missing Ones
The missing ones are those children and young people who never return home. Some are girls fleeing abusive homes in rural areas, seeking safety in a city they’ve never been to before. Each day, they arrive in Mumbai’s train stations. Scared and alone, they accept help from a stranger waiting on the platform, only to vanish without trace. Others are among the thousands of girls taken across the border every year from Nepal into India. Promised work, marriage or simply abducted, once across, they disappear — hidden in brothels, domestic service or forced labour. Families left behind desperately seek answers but find only silence instead.
Poverty makes people visible to traffickers but invisible to justice.
Our Solution
Karuna works where the risks are greatest, with the most marginalised communities across South Asia.
Together with our local partners, we confront trafficking at its roots through the 3PR model:
Prevent
Raising awareness in vulnerable villages, training girls’ groups to resist early marriage, creating safe migration hubs and educating families about traffickers’ false promises.
Respond
Intercepting girls at train stations before traffickers can reach them; rescuing children from illegal “orphanages” and reintegrating them with their families; offering counselling, shelter and legal aid for survivors.
Rehabilitate
Ensuring survivors can safely return to their families and communities, with access to schooling, counselling, skills training and long-term support.
Reform
Supporting the enforcement of anti-trafficking laws by training police and frontline workers, helping survivors access justice, and holding traffickers to account.
This year alone, our partners have:
· Supported 35,000 women and girls to protect themselves from trafficking and violence.
· Helped children like Anita return home, back to school and back to safety.
· Intercepted traffickers working out of hotspots in remote villages, train stations and border crossings.
No child should be paraded for tourists.
No girl should vanish from a station platform.
No family should be tricked into giving up their daughter.
What can you do?
Your support can change this. With your gift we can:
1. Rescue and reintegrate more children from bogus orphanages.
2. Expand safe migration centres that protect women from exploitation.
3. Train thousands of community members and officials to prevent trafficking before it begins.
Together, we can break the cycle of trafficking, restoring childhoods, safety and hope to those most at risk. We can make sure fewer children become the missing ones.
Please give today and stand with us against trafficking.
Thank you.
The Missing
Ones...
Break the cycle of trafficking, restore childhoods, safety and hope to those most at risk.
