Sunita Danuwar | |
|---|---|
 Sunita Danuwar in 2018 | |
| Born | July 16, 1977 |
| Occupation | President of Sunita Foundation |
| Known for | Social activism |
| Website | Official website |
Sunita Danuwar (born July 16, 1977), is a Nepalese human rights activist and the founder of Sunita Foundation and Shakti Samuha, a non-governmental organization based in Nepal formed by women rescued from brothels in India that works against the trafficking of women. [1]
Sunita Danuwar was born to parents Ganga Ban and Chandrakala Ban in Kasigadh VDC, Dailekh district, which is located in the remote western part of Nepal. [2] Because girls' education is not a priority for most poor Nepalese families, Danuwar didn't have the opportunity to go to school during her childhood. Nevertheless, her father taught her the Nepali alphabet and numbers. At the age of five, after having lost six brothers and sisters from malnutrition, poverty and lack of access to health care, she and her family settled in Jammu and Kashmir, a state in northern India. [3] When Danuwar reached the age of fourteen, the family decided to move again, this time to Nainital.
On the way to Nainital, her family stopped in Almora, a town in the state of Uttarakhand, in order to make some money to continue their travels. There, they met two Nepali tractor drivers and befriended them. When Danuwar's family finally gathered enough funds to continue the journey toward Nainital, the two tractor drivers drugged Danuwar's food, causing her to lose consciousness. [2] [3] They sold her to a brothel in Mumbai for 40,000 Indian rupees.[ citation needed ]
When she realized she was in a brothel, Danuwar categorically refused to have sexual intercourse despite mental and physical torture she was enduring and she thought about committing suicide. Approximatively one month later, she was sold by the brothel owner to another brothel for 100,000 Indian rupees. [3] There too she was tortured and threatened with death until the brothel owner ordered five men to rape her, leaving her with no other option but to work as a forced sex-worker during six months. She finally escaped on February 5, 1996, [4] thanks to the major raids of brothels in Mumbai during that year, launched upon the huge pressure coming from national- and international-level child rights organizations to save minor children from forced sex slavery. [5] During those raids, 484 girls and women were rescued from brothels. Over 40% of them were from Nepal, like Danuwar.
Seven months later, nearly 128 Nepali girls and women returned in Kathmandu, Nepal and fifteen of them, including Danuwar, decided to create an organization called Shakti Samuha, Nepali for Power Group.
Danuwar and her friends created Shakti Samuha in 1996. The main objective was to raise awareness about the issue of illegal trafficking of girls and women. She began to spend a lot of time walking the streets of several Nepali villages to warn young girls and women at risk of being trafficked. [6] She also wrote scripts for plays in which she would act either as a brothel owner or as a broker, staging her plays with other members of Shakti Samuha directly in the streets.
However, Danuwar isn't limited to a particular role in the organization. She's both a counsellor and a teacher for the rescued girls and women. She's also involved in the organization's policy-making, strategy development and training programs. Since 2011, she's serving her second term as the president of the organization (her first term lasted from 2000 to 2004).
In 2001, Danuwar entered seventh grade in Kathmandu, Nepal and stayed two years at school thanks to the donor support of Shakti Samuha. In 2009, she managed to find funding to attend courses of school support for four months and then joined SLC, the final year of schooling in Nepal. She passed the secondary school examination and studied for two years in Padma Kanya Multiple Campus, Kathmandu. She's currently working toward a Bachelor of Arts in Social Works at Kadambery Academy, Kathmandu.
Danuwar has been a board member of the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women since 2008 [7] and one of the Executive Board members of NGO Federation of Nepal (NFN). [8] She was also a chairperson of the Alliance Against Trafficking in Women and Children in Nepal (AATWIN) from 2009 to 2010. [9] On April 14, 2015, she was part of the Panel of Speakers of a high-level event on the United Nations Voluntary Trust Fund for Victims of Trafficking in Persons. [10]
After the April 2015 Nepal earthquake, Danuwar called for the greatest possible vigilance and enjoined girls and women in particular to protect themselves against sex trafficking. She declared "We are getting reports of [individuals] pretending to go for rescuing and looking at people." [11] [12] Shakti Samuha was also one of Childreach International's partner in its Taught, Not Trafficked project. [13] Concerning that project, she stated: "As a survivor of trafficking, I know how evil and damaging the practice is, and what consequences it has not just for those trafficked but whole communities. Childreach International's Taught, Not Trafficked project is a hugely important campaign that will help us reduce child trafficking in Nepal and hopefully, with the right education and storytelling, prevent it from happening in the future."
Danuwar is also one of the two main characters of The Color of Brave, a Nepali documentary directed by the filmmaker Binod Adhikari. [14] [15] [16]
Prostitution is illegal in Nepal. The Human Trafficking and Transportation (Control) Act, 2064, Act Number 5 of the Year 2064 (2008), criminalises prostitution and living of the earnings of prostitution by including it in the definition of human trafficking. UNAIDS estimate there to be 67,300 prostitutes in the country.
Tulasa Thapa was a Nepali girl who was kidnapped from her home village of Thankot near Kathmandu in 1982 at the age of 13, smuggled into Mumbai via the border town of Birganj in Parsa District, and sold into prostitution. She was systematically beaten into submission, then repeatedly raped to make her fit for the trade. She was sold to three different brothels in Mumbai, at prices ranging from 5000 to 7000 rupees. In addition to the sex work she was forced to do in the brothel at a minimum of three customers per night, she was sent to various city hotels dressed in European style clothes to entertain customers for 180 rupees per night until at last a hotel manager reported her to the police. Following the public outcry, the governments of India and Nepal signed a 1985 cooperation agreement addressing the rescue and repatriation of Nepali girls trafficked into brothels in India.
Forced prostitution, also known as involuntary prostitution or compulsory prostitution, is prostitution or sexual slavery that takes place as a result of coercion by a third party. The terms "forced prostitution" or "enforced prostitution" appear in international and humanitarian conventions, such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, but have been inconsistently applied. "Forced prostitution" refers to conditions of control over a person who is coerced by another to engage in sexual activity.How many people live through this type of abuse every day remains unknown.
Maiti Nepal is a non-profit organization in Nepal dedicated to helping the victims of human trafficking. Currently, it operates a rehabilitation home in Kathmandu, transit homes at the Indo-Nepal border towns, preventive homes in the countryside, and an academy in Kathmandu.
Prostitution is legal and regulated in Bangladesh. Prostitutes must register and state an affidavit stating that they are entering prostitution of their own free choice and that they are unable to find any other work. Bangladeshi prostitutes often suffer poor social conditions and are frequently socially degraded.
Feminism in Nepal is primarily concerned with equity and equality of opportunity. Nepali society is traditionally patriarchal. Feminists in Nepal seek to address this situation. Most women in Nepal are placed below to their husbands and fathers in a social hierarchy.
Human trafficking in India, although illegal under Indian law, remains a significant problem. People are frequently illegally trafficked through India for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced/bonded labour. Although no reliable study of forced and bonded labour has been completed, NGOs estimate this problem affects 20 to 65 million Indians. Men, women and children are trafficked in India for diverse reasons. Women and girls are trafficked within the country for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage, especially in those areas where the sex ratio is highly skewed in favour of men. Men and boys are trafficked for the purposes of labour, and may be sexually exploited by traffickers to serve as gigolos, massage experts, escorts, etc. A significant portion of children are subjected to forced labour as factory workers, domestic servants, beggars, and agriculture workers, and have been used as armed combatants by some terrorist and insurgent groups.
Anuradha Koirala, Okaldhunga district, is a Nepalese social activist and the founder of Maiti Nepal – a non-profit organization in Nepal, dedicated to helping victims of sex trafficking. She was appointed as 1st Governor of Bagmati Province from by the Government of Nepal.
Human trafficking in Nepal is a growing criminal industry affecting multiple other countries beyond Nepal, primarily across Asia and the Middle East. Nepal is mainly a source country for men, women and children subjected to the forced labor and sex trafficking. U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in "Tier 2" in 2017.
Nigeria is a source, transit, and destination country for women and children subjected to trafficking in persons including forced labour and forced prostitution. The U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in "Tier 2 Watchlist" in 2017. Trafficked people, particularly women and children, are recruited from within and outside the country's borders – for involuntary domestic servitude, sexual exploitation, street hawking, domestic servitude, mining, begging etc. Some are taken from Nigeria to other West and Central African countries, primarily Gabon, Cameroon, Ghana, Chad, Benin, Togo, Niger, Burkina Faso, and the Gambia, for the same purposes. Children from other West African states like Benin, Togo, and Ghana – where Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) rules allow for easy entry – are also forced to work in Nigeria, and some are subjected to hazardous jobs in Nigeria's granite mines. Europe, especially Italy and Russia, the Middle East and North Africa, are prime destinations for forced prostitution.Nigerians accounted for 21% of the 181,000 migrants that arrived in Italy through the Mediterranean in 2016 and about 21,000 Nigerian women and girls have been trafficked to Italy since 2015.
Triveni Acharya is an Indian journalist and activist living in Mumbai, best known for her work with the anti-sex-trafficking group the Rescue Foundation.
Women LEAD is a non-governmental organization that provides women's leadership development training and advocacy in Nepal. It is based in Kathmandu, Nepal and Arlington, Virginia in the United States.
Agroforestry, Basic Health, and Cooperative Nepal is a nonprofit, non governmental organisation working in Nepal that focuses on women's rights and works against human trafficking in Nepal. Created in 1987, ABC Nepal was among the first Non Governmental Organisations established in Nepal. It was registered soon after the introduction of Nepalese multiparty democracy in 1991. The president of the organisation is Durga Ghimire.
Charimaya ("Anu") Tamang is a recipient of the Hero Acting to End Modern-Day Slavery Award 2011, founder of Shakti Samuha which has been awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award 2013. She was born into a poor family and sold to India when she was 16 years to work in a brothel as a sex worker. She spent 22 months in a brothel before the Indian government rescued her along with over 200 other Nepali women in 1996. Upon her return to Nepal, Tamang was ostracised by her community.
Shakti Samuha is a non-profit organisation working against women trafficking. It is based in Nepal and was formed by the survivors of women trafficking in India, including Charimaya Tamang. The organisation is a recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award 2013.
Sex trafficking in the United States is a form of human trafficking which involves reproductive slavery or commercial sexual exploitation as it occurs in the United States. Sex trafficking includes the transportation of persons by means of coercion, deception and/or force into exploitative and slavery-like conditions. It is commonly associated with organized crime.
Rangu Souriya is an Indian activist and social worker for women and children. She is the founder of Kanchanjunga Uddhar Kendra, a non-profit organization based in Siliguri, dedicated to helping victims of sex trafficking in Darjeeling, North East India and Nepal. She was awarded the Godfrey Phillips National Bravery Awards in 2011.
Gender inequality in Nepal refers to disparities and inequalities between men and women in Nepal, a landlocked country in South Asia. Gender inequality is defined as unequal treatment and opportunities due to perceived differences based solely on issues of gender. Gender inequality is a major barrier for human development worldwide as gender is a determinant for the basis of discrimination in various spheres such as health, education, political representation, and labor markets. Although Nepal is modernizing and gender roles are changing, the traditionally patriarchal society creates systematic barriers to gender equality.
Sex trafficking in China is human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation and slavery that occurs in the People's Republic of China. China, the world's second-most populous country, has the second highest number of human trafficking victims in the world. It is a country of origin, destination, and transit for sexually trafficked persons.
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