Clinton Global Citizen Award Winner Ruchira Gupta Leverages Global Attention to Take on Sex Trafficking

Apne Aap's Expanded Global Advocacy to End Sex Trafficking Prioritizes Leadership of Survivors

NEW YORK, Sept. 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In the past year, Ruchira Gupta, President of Apne Aap Women Worldwide and recipient of the 2009 Clinton Global Citizen Award, has made significant strides in the battle to end sex trafficking in India and around the world.  Apne Aap has used the increased visibility brought by the Clinton Global Initiative's honor to dramatically expand its programmatic reach on the ground, while spearheading cutting-edge, survivor-led strategies in the global movement to end sex trafficking.

Apne Aap's work is based around organizing the victims and survivors of sex trafficking into "self-help groups" and transforming those groups into small business collectives. In the last year alone, Apne Aap has more than doubled the number of registered self-help groups, growing the number of women and girls whose lives are directly affected from 1,005 one year ago to 2,185 today. Through community centers and publications, Apne Aap's impact now reaches over 10,000 women and girls in India's red light districts.

Perhaps the most significant achievement of Apne Aap over the past year is its profound influence on the perspective of global decision makers in their treatment of the survivors of sex trafficking. The organization has challenged the notion that survivors are passive recipients, convincing the highest level policy makers that survivors are active change agents remarkably capable of informing and shaping national laws and international agendas. In October 2009, Gupta took a panel of survivors to speak at the UN General Assembly in New York alongside Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillai, and in 2010, she led a group of survivors to speak before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Apne Aap has opened groundbreaking avenues within India for survivors to communicate their ideas to strengthen the anti-trafficking law, the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act, rallying the voices of 3,042 survivors of trafficking to demand the criminalization of the buyers and profiteers of commercial sex while decriminalizing the women in prostitution.

More recently, Apne Aap has embarked on an exciting South-South anti-trafficking partnership with NGOs in South Africa by exporting its model of community organizing and women's self-empowerment to this new arena. Speaking before the South African Parliament this summer, Gupta called on African politicians to put into place stricter mechanisms to prevent trafficking in women and girls.

"The Clinton Global Initiative award was significant for Apne Aap because it opened up new opportunities by amplifying the influence that an NGO from the Global South can have internationally. The increased visibility has helped raise funding, networking opportunities and the ability to engage with new audiences," said Ruchira Gupta.  In 2010, Gupta was invited to join CGI Lead, a high-level group within the Clinton Global Initiative whose mission is to "bring together a select group of accomplished young leaders to develop innovative solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges." Said Gupta, "There is still much that needs to be done in addressing sex trafficking effectively. As India is gearing up to the Commonwealth Games in October, the government has not prioritized the safety of women and girls from commercial sexual exploitation. Thousands of women and girls' lives are in danger and we need to keep global pressure on the Indian government to put in place adequate measures that will protect girls and women."

On Tuesday, September 21st, Gupta moderated a session at the CGI Annual Meeting to explore initiatives that are applying different approaches to the problem of trafficking, including monitoring corporate supply chains, rehabilitating victims through training and income generation, and preventing trafficking through education and micro-land grants. Among the participants were actors Julia Ormond, Ashley Judd, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher.

About Apne Aap

Apne Aap fights human trafficking and empowers women to escape sexual slavery. We provide the women and children of India's Red Light Districts with education, health care, legal protection and job skills.

Field Update: 12-year Old Girl Escapes Sex Trafficking and Plays Major Role in Prosecuting Traffickers

This summer, 12-year old Nisha went missing. Nisha comes from a red-light area in a rural community in Bihar, India where caste discrimination pushes many families to accept forced prostitution as their expected means of income generation. The region is rampant with home-based brothels and parents trafficking their own children. On hearing of Nisha's disappearance, Apne Aap quickly stepped in, reporting the situation to the police and finding the traffickers who had taken Nisha with the intent of sexual exploitation. With Apne Aap's help, Nisha was rescued from an area brothel and brought to Apne Aap's Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya hostel and school. This marks the first ever occasion when a rescued girl has been brought to a rehabilitation program, rather than a jail or shelter. Nisha is recovering well from the trauma in the safe, stable environment of the school. She recently gathered the courage to testify against her own father for pulling her out of school and is assisting Apne Aap in the prosecution of child traffickers.

The right to education is at the center of Apne Aap's legal campaign to stop the forced prostitution of all girls. During Nisha's rescue, Apne Aap lobbied the Chief Minister of the state of Bihar to take action to prevent parent-traffickers from pulling their children out of schools and safe houses. As a result, the Chief Minister ordered a new School and Hostel facility built for Apne Aap and has committed to extend funding to allow what was previously a 9-month bridge program into a full middle and high school.

SOURCE Apne Aap Women Worldwide