Contemporary Slavery, Justice, and the Last Girl

The Last Girl is the most vulnerable. She exists everywhere and has little control over her life, decision-making, and her body. She lives in conditions akin to slavery. There is no effective orcomprehensive justice system to prevent her exploitation or help her exit this system. Her “agency” in her own enslavement is routinely accepted at face value by the state, which fails to help her attain her basic needs or increase her choices. This talk contends that the basic needs of the Last Girl are her human rights, and raises issues and questions regarding the structures of exploitation and the normalization of exploitation as livelihood.

Gupta is the Founder and President of Apne Aap Women Worldwide – a grassroots organization in India working to end sex trafficking by increasing choices for at-risk girls and women. Gupta is also Adjunct Associate Professor, MSC for Global Affairs, at NYU. She has focused her 25-year career on the link between trafficking and prostitution laws, while lobbying policymakers to shift blame from victims to perpetrators. Prior to founding Apne Aap, Gupta worked in the UN in various capacities in 12 countries for over ten years. She has won numerous awards, including the Clinton Global Citizen Award, Abolitionist Award at the UK House of Lords, l’Ordre national du Mérite, and CSW Woman of the Year. In 2016, Gupta was appointed a Distinguished Scholar with the Political Conflict, Gender, and People’s Rights Project at Center for Race and Gender, UC Berkeley.